By Tiffany Bloomer
A dim, flickering light bulb dangles overhead. Papers fall from overturned desks and scatter across the floor. Coworkers cradle their heads in their hands. Eyes dart around frantically. There’s a faint sound of frightened sobs in the distance.
No, it’s not the end of the world. It’s your network. Your systems failed, and critical, sensitive business data is lost permanently. It’s a data apocalypse, and you’re infected.
This may sound like a scene straight from your favorite horror flick, but it’s a very real situation for many small and medium businesses. Did you know that 140,000 hard drives fail each week in the United States? Despite the frequency of the data apocalypse, 58% of small businesses have done nothing to prepare for a data loss.
Protecting Your Lifeline
For your business to survive, it has to be accessible. It must be up and running at all times for its customers, as well as its employees. Connections to business information must be reliable and continuous. This means backing up server and storage data, along with workstations and laptops.
When data is lost or compromised, productivity comes to a screeching stop — and the consequences can be deadly to your business and your bottom line.
The good news is that downtime and lost data can be avoided if you are adequately prepared. Here are some top data backup survival tools every small business needs to avoid a data apocalypse:
Survival Tool #1: Backup Software
If you have the right backup hardware in place, you need backup software you can trust to recover your data without compromising security.
Veeam Availability Suite is an excellent backup option for virtual machines (VMs) and physical servers. Software is managed through the same space as virtual backups. When disaster strikes, Veeam has your back with:
- Guaranteed Availability — Get access to fast recovery time and recovery point objectives for all VM systems in less than 15 minutes for all applications and data.
- Absolute Privacy — With licensing, your backup data is always secure with unique end-to-end encryption.
- Long-Term Retention — Data is retained for as long as you need it with advanced native-tape support and direct-storage integrations with industry-leading storage providers like EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NetApp.
- Built-In Disaster Recovery — With the high-level license, disaster recovery testing is built-in, and Veeam guarantees recovery point objectives of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data, as well as simplified proof of compliance with automated reporting.
Survival Tool #2 – A Managed Service Provider
The right hardware and software are critical tools for server and storage data backup and recovery, but there is another tool you need in your survival kit: a partner to help you manage it all.
A trusted managed service provider (MSP) can protect against potential threats, keep your data safe and lead the charge when disaster strikes — helping restore critical data and services before your business is affected.
Survival Tool #3 – Cloud Services
When zombies, floods, hurricanes or other catastrophes wipe out the office, you’ll be glad you backed up your data offsite. Backing up everything in the cloud ensures it is always safe — no matter what happens.
What is cloud disaster recovery?
Simply put, cloud disaster recovery is a way to store and maintain copies of electronic data in a cloud storage environment to keep it safe. This way, if your system goes down, you can easily recover your company’s mission-critical data.
Why trust the cloud?
Some major benefits to managed services in the cloud include:
Business Continuity
While you’re recovering from an on-premise failure, cloud storage options will allow you to access mission-critical data and applications. As a result, your business can continue to function.
Lower Upfront Costs
Upfront costs are low, and ongoing costs are predictable, so you can more accurately budget your IT dollars.
More Time to Prep
By outsourcing data protection duties, your IT team can focus on more strategic issues.
Be Prepared
Don’t be one of those smbs that are not prepared for a system failure or loss of data that can have catastrophic consequences. To ensure you’re not left in the dark, be prepared.
For a more complete look that these essential data apocalypse survival tools download a copy of our free e-book.
Tiffany Bloomer is the president of Aventis Systems.
Recovery stock photo by Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
