Check YoSelf Before You Wreck YoSelf
March 31 is World Backup Day. According to the World Backup Day website, 30 percent of people have never backed up, 1 in 10 computers are infected by viruses each month and 29 percent of disasters are caused by accident. Not every disaster is a natural one, some are caused by humans. Be prepared. For more information on what downtime can cost you and your options afterwards, check out our Love Your Data? Fall in Love with Your Backups blog post.
If your system went down what would you do? When was the last time you backed up your PICK/MultiValue system? If you do backups, when was the last time you tested them to see if they were valid? Have you ever done a bare metal restore? We have had more than one client find out too late that their file-save was blank or the data was corrupted or major files were missing. We offer short term server leasing for as low as $10 per day so you can test your backups from a bare metal installation. We can also provide guidance on best practices. Not only does this let you know your backups are valid, but also how long it takes to recover.
This blog will take a look at options you have before a disaster happens.
Backup Solutions for any Budget Whether You are On-Prem or in the Cloud
Snapshots
These are images that can be taken at any frequency without disrupting the database or host environment . Restores can be done at any point in time that a snapshot was done. We include daily snapshots schedules in our cloud offering. Additional snapshots are available.
File-saves
These can be done as often as you like and are typically kept off site in a secure environment. Once you are down, you have to go out and acquire and build a new server from scratch. Then you have to configure it, install all the software, then do a restore from your latest backup. Then test to make sure everything is working as it was. This can take up to 4 days including the time it took to re-input all the data since the last backup.
Most expensive option once down, cheapest to implement before outage.
Standby Systems
Standby systems are completely prepared servers that are stored until you need them. Everything has been tested to make sure it runs exactly like your primary server (printing, access, etc). Once you need it, all you have to do is call your cloud provider, turn the server on, activate the MultiValue license and restore your latest file-save. Once that is done, you need to recreate the data that was lost since the last backup.
Second most expensive option to implement – your exposure is the time it takes to restore and re-put any data lost since your last backup.
Hot Backup systems for any MultiValue Database ( D3, mvBASE, UniVerse, UniData, Reality and OpenQM)
In this case your system is always up to date. Once you know you are down, you have all your employees switch over to the new backup server. Since you had a plan in place, the employees already had a secondary IP icon on their desktops and knew exactly what to do. Their last transaction was there so no need to recreate any lost data. They continue to work as if nothing happened. Now your downtime is as minimal as an hour instead of days.
Most expensive to implement, least amount of downtime.
Bottom Line
Knowing exactly what risks you are willing to take, how long you can afford to be down and creating a DR plan that works for you can mitigate your liability when your system is down and need to recover. Not only do you have a plan in place, you know where the vulnerabilities are, how long you can expect to be down and what the cost of that downtime would be.
Pick Cloud offers all these options, can help you plan, and can help you with your backup budget, whatever its size. For a limited time, we will verify your backup for FREE. Contact us today to schedule a session and to learn more.
