According to relevant surveys, many businesses still suffer data recovery failures even if they have held backups in place. In this article, we’ll point out the 4 biggest challenges facing data backup and recovery.
Nowadays, both home users and businesses have begun attaching importance to data backup and data recovery. For home users, it may be easier. For example, to protect Outlook data, they can just back up PST file periodically. If unfortunately the file also gets damaged, a PST recovery tool can rescue them like a breeze. But for businesses, data backups and recovery would be much more complex. Obviously, a data recovery plan is badly in need. But sometimes, even with a remarkable DR plan, recovery can fail as well. Chances are that they haven’t taken the following challenges into consideration.
Challenge 1: Unreliable Backup Technology
Dependable backup is the foundation of a perfect data recovery. No matter how excellent your data recovery plan is , it still cannot come to your rescue if the backup technology malfunctions. Therefore, so as to succeed in data recovery, it is critical for you to ensure that your selected backup technology can keep working as it should. As for how to determine if it is reliable, you can refer to the following criteria:
- Firstly, it had best be automatic.
- Secondly, it should guarantee that the integrity of your data can be supported by both online and offline verification.
- Thirdly, it would better if the backup can carry out automatic check by itself.
- Plus, you should keep redundancy in backups, such that if one backup fails, others can still work normally.
Challenge 2: No Valid Data Recovery Plan in Place
Perhaps you indeed have developed a data recovery plan in place. However, many people don’t think about if their plans are proper, valid or not. In reality, a strong and correct recovery plan should be in paper documents. Also, it should illustrate all the elaborate steps in case of a data disaster. To sum up, you should make sure that your DR plan should encompass the three primary factors shown as below:
- Involved Personnel: List out all the persons who will participate in the battle of rescuing data. Provide them with accurate liberty and ability to deal with their responsibilities in the event of data disaster.
- Key Data: Define which data are the most important. If without them, your business won’t be able to operate at all. Ensure that you can protect them effectively.
- Detailed Rescuing Steps: Identify the concrete steps to salvage data when a data disaster strikes, say who to do what in that case.
Challenge 3: Fail to Test Data Recovery Plan
When it comes to DR testing, there are two common mistakes which most firms can make on daily work. One is that they haven’t tested the plan consistently. The other one is that they just test the plan in virtual scenario. Both of them can lead to recovery failure. Undoubtedly, an effective plan should be not only the documents outlining all imaginary details. You have to endow it with the creativity and flexibility so that it can acclimatize itself to various disasters, which can only realize when you test it on a consistent basis and put into real world.
Challenge 4: Fail to Invest in Data Recovery Plan
Apparently, no businesses are willing to buy a number of redundant equipment for coping with data disaster. But you should bear in mind a truth – “an effective DR plan cannot come for free”. However, it doesn’t mean that an effective DR plan cost you the earth. You still can minimize the cost and receive the maximum ROI. Therefore, you should make prudent decisions when purchasing related devices.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including sql recovery and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com
qXGgHtRQsfy