How good IS your current backup set? You have one – Right? I’m sharing this section of how to create a good backup from a pro – You will well served to not just read – but implement!
Backups Part 1 – Defining Your Client Backup
Sometimes you have to cut through all the hundreds of things you do for clients and get to the absolute basics. The most time consuming “basic thing” we do is to maintain computers and networks. That maintenance is probably the second most important thing we do. The most important thing we do is to prepare for something that almost never happens: Building and testing backups.
Clients rarely understand the importance of backups. If they did, the number of new clients with working backups would be much higher. Until a client has experienced a truly catostrophic data loss, they just don’t put much emphasis on backups. And of course backups are completely useless without a good restore from backup!
As with most modern technology, backups have what I call the Paradox of Simplicity: It’s easy ENOUGH that anyone can create a bad backup system that appears to be good enough. When a client (or an incompetent technician) creates a half-baked, “good enough” network, it will be a slow network that has more equipment failures than a professional network. Maybe that’s good enough.
But a “good enough” backup is not good enough. If you can’t recover data, or can’t recover all data, the client is likely to go out of business! If you need scary stats on this, read the excellent report by (more…)