When Designing A Data Backup Plan, Give Tape A Pass

If you suddenly were to find yourself in a data-loss situation, you would want to have some sort of backup in place to protect your critical data. However, not all backup solutions are the same, and some will do a better job than others at keeping your data safe while remaining convenient to the needs of a business. As an example, let’s compare tape backup to a cloud-based backup and data recovery solution.

How Tape Backup Works, and How It Can Fail
Tape backup does exactly what it sounds like it does: a backup of your data is digitally stored on tape. While this method was used for years, there are many downsides to it that a modern business simply cannot forgive.

For example, tape backup is remarkably slow when compared to the more modern options that are available. It can take hours to preserve the day’s data, and so most backups need to be ran at night. While this is comparatively better than losing all of a business’ data, restoring from a backup meant that any work that had been done thus far that day would be lost, essentially rendering the day worthless as the workforce started the same tasks over.

It must also be mentioned how susceptible this system was to disaster. An on-site backup could be damaged by any disaster that struck the business. This is no different than never backing up at all. Of course, if the person responsible had forgotten to start the backup at the end of the day, this could easily be the reality.

With businesses running the way they do today, this system simply isn’t sustainable. That’s why many businesses have turned to cloud-based backup and data recovery solution.

What Makes Cloud-Based BDR Better
In order to really outline exactly what is better about a cloud-based BDR, it helps to know how they work. Instead of having to be manually activated at the end of every workday, the BDR can automatically take incremental backups throughout the day. This allows a backup to be taken once every fifteen minutes, ensuring that as much data as possible is preserved.

Additionally, since a BDR hosted in the cloud isn’t kept onsite, your data is safe from whatever caused the data loss incident in the first place. With the cloud, your data can be saved in data centers across the nation, so if one happens to be affected by the disaster that put your data at risk in the first place, your data will also be saved, safe and sound, in another.

Even better, the entire system will be automated, so you won’t have to worry about someone forgetting to start the backup process.

If you’re ready to stop betting your business on outdated technology, let SCW know. We can help you install and deploy a backup solution to protect your data and your business. Call us at (509) 534-1530 today.