To spur my muse, I have been asking clients and friends for topics for my blog. My first topic comes from Melissa Prandi of Prandi Property Management in San Rafael. She writes “Backups are important – how do we know they work?” This is a great question and certainly falls in line with previous articles in this blog. And at first the answer seems simple.
You know your backups work when you successfully restore data from them.
So that brings up the question, “Do you have to lose data to find out if your backups are working?” And the answer, of course, is no you don’t. You can test. But testing is just part of an overall plan. First and foremost you need policies and procedures that mitigate the loss of data.
Any good backup plan has four elements:
· A methodology.
· Criteria for backup.
· A schedule of frequency.
· A monitoring system.
What is methodology? Simply put. It is the software, hardware and media you use to create your backup. It can be as simple as Windows backup using a cdrom. Or it can be as complex as multi-server software writing to multiple tape cartridges. What is more important, you must know that these three components are working. If you are using tape cartridges, for example, you must plan for their wearing out. (See my earlier blog on tape life cycles.).
For criteria you need to specify what you want to backup. It doesn’t make sense to back up data you do not need and fail to backup the data you do. Yet, I have seen this numerous times. Small firms often allow all employees full access to their data drive. Employees add and remove folders at will; but no one updates the backup schedule; and critical files get missed.
And that leads us to scheduling. You need to decide how often you back up, whether you are rotating media and whether you want multiple copies of data. Many backup programs, allow for daily weekly and monthly backups where weekly and monthly backups are stored off-site.
With all this in place, you need to monitor that it is happening. You need procedures in place that force you to check your backups against the criteria and the schedule. Have you ever gone into a public restroom in a restaurant or airport and seen the log sheets where the employees initial that they have checked the facilities for cleanliness and supplies? You should have a similar checklist when it comes to backups.
So to answer Melissa’s question, you know your backups are working when:
· You know that your media and devices are sound.
· You know by checking your logs that your backups are succeeding.
· You know by checking your criteria that you are getting the right data.
· You know by test restores, that the data is accessible and readable.
To learn more about test restores, read Marcel Brown’s answer to the same question.
