Validate Backups For Added Insurance
The Business Owner Who Thought All Was Well
Here’s a short but true story that I hope would drive home the point:
Shortly after Hurricane Sandy, we scheduled an assessment for a prospect in New York. As usual, we assessed the company’s workstations, spoke to management and several employees, and reviewed their server configuration and settings.
When we asked about the backup system, the owner told us that backups were taken care of by a trusted I.T. guy, and everything was OK. The owner then showed us an email from his I.T. guy, saying all was well.
After insisting that we inspect his backups, we found that no backups were taken for a few weeks! This was right after Hurricane Sandy, and this particular company was very fortunate not to have suffered any damage.
Their I.T. guy had set up and relied solely on automated alerts. He felt that no alerts meant no problems.
Had we not insisted on inspecting his backups, this owner would not have known that his company was unprotected for weeks. Another disaster, natural or man-made, could have severely damaged this company and possibly put him out of business.
We won the business and took over the management of his network and backup solution.
NEVER Solely Rely On Automated Alerts
Automation is great. It saves a lot of time and allows providers to concentrate on essential tasks while reducing manual effort. All vendors use automated alerts to service their clients better.
However, something as small as a Microsoft update can inadvertently shut off an automated alert. If your vendor doesn’t check periodically, they’ll never know something is wrong, like the I.T. guy above.
At XSolutions, we take Backup Disaster Recovery very seriously; after all, it’s what we do. We combine automated alerts with daily human reviews to ensure all systems are backed up on schedule. If an issue occurs, we’ll know about it and solve the problem quickly.
What About The Viability Of Your Data?
OK, so we know never to rely solely on automated alerts when it comes to backups. But, how do you know if the data you’ve backed up is viable? The worse time to find out that you’ve backed up garbage is when you need to restore it after disaster strikes. You must perform test restores.
This is extremely hard with data only backup systems. To ensure your data is good, you’d need to perform a test restore ON EVERY FILE! An impossible feat, even for a small company with only a few megabytes of data. What if you have terabytes of information added daily?
In our opinion, nothing beats Datto’s Hybrid-cloud Business Continuity solution. We’ve written about Datto before, but, for our money, it can’t be topped. In addition to giving you an image-based solution, instant onsite failover, automatically sending copies of backups to two geographically dispersed cloud data centers, plus bare-metal restore capability―you also get daily screenshot verification.
Datto’s Daily Screenshot Verification PLUS XSolutions’ Human Review
EVERY day, Datto virtualizes and test-boots protected servers, detecting any backup concerns using a combination of screen recognition and patented CPU register algorithms. This allows large quantities of protected servers, even across a fleet of Datto appliances, to have backup data integrity validated at a scale traditional solutions could never match. Once you see the bootup screen, you know that the virtualized server is ready to go.
But, we go a step further…
Add XSolutions’ daily human review process to Datto’s Screenshot Verification, and you have an unbeatable combination. You’ll get peace of mind knowing that technology plus human oversight are protecting one of your most valuable assets―your company’s data.
No system is infallible, so we make sure that each server successfully test-boots each day. If something goes wrong, we jump on the problem immediately. We don’t take chances with your information.
Our mission is to ensure that your data is secure, protected, viable, and ready for deployment at a moment’s notice.
XSolutions is an Elite Partner of Datto, the world leader in Hybrid-Cloud Business Continuity solutions. We provide Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), Backup as a Service (BaaS), Cloud Data Protection (CDP), and Managed I.T. Services (MSP). Call (845) 362-9675 for a free consultation. Backup & Disaster Recovery| Cloud Data Protection |Managed I.T. Services
