Backup for SMBs

What would happen to your business if you lost access to critical customer data like orders and invoices? What about that important proposal you’ve been working on for the last three days? Or, worst of all, there’s a fire and all your computers are destroyed? How long could your business survive in such a situation?

For many businesses, these are hard questions that are rarely asked. And given the increasing complexity of our technology footprint, the answer might not be easily discerned.

According to John Reeman from Symantec, “Businesses need to be serious about their disaster recovery planning. Most businesses will go out of business in a short time following a disaster.”

Here’s a typical scenario. A business might have a small server that stores files that are shared and possibly some virtualised applications. There will be a couple of computers, some tablets and smartphones, and potentially a cloud-based application for customer relationship management of the accounts. Data is spread between multiple devices with some managed within the business and some by external service providers. And locally managed servers are no longer single purpose with virtualisation increasingly common.

SMBs in Australia have one of the highest take-ups of virtualisation in the world with the penetration running at around 25% according to a recent survey undertaken by Symantec. While many similar surveys carried out around the world point to cost savings as the primary motivation for virtualising infrastructure, in Australia the focus is on business continuity and improving server management. But SMBs are looking at cloud and virtual infrastructure as a new platform to make them more competitive in a fast-moving world.

“SMBs are looking at virtualising their backups. With Australia having one of the highest take-ups of virtualisation it’s a fairly important thing to be thinking about but it’s often one of the last things considered, much like an insurance policy,” says Reeman.

With the opportunities and benefits delivered through the cloud and virtualisation come some challenges. More than 40% of respondents to Symantec’s research say they have lost data in the cloud and have had to restore their information from backups. Two-thirds of those organisations saw recovery operations fail. The trouble is that backup is one of the last things considered. Rather than being part of the system plan from the start, it’s seen as an afterthought - a bit like an insurance policy.

The trouble is that backup is one of the last things considered. Rather than being part of the system plan from the start, it’s seen as an afterthought.

Planning your backup strategy

In order for a backup and recovery strategy to align with your business needs, you need to do some planning.

You might think that part of what you get when you outsource something to a cloud provider is backups of all your data. Don’t rely on the cloud provider to deliver those services. Some do but a lot don’t. You still have to think about protecting your data and the sensitivity of that data.

Reeman said, “For backups to be effective you need to plan well, think strategically and think about the protection levels and their appropriateness within the data. Should you encrypt? And review your DR strategy. If you’re putting your information in the cloud but you’re not backing it up it might not be safe. Cloud providers can suffer disasters just like you can.”

When you choose a cloud provider to deliver infrastructure or applications look into their backup plans. Do they back your data up regularly? Is there a cost associated with data recovery? What if the provider suffers some sort of catastrophe? When Amazon Web Services recently suffered outages, their customers - some who were very large - were severely affected.

“What SMBs have to think about is that if they’re thinking about moving to the cloud, don’t rely on the cloud provider to provide backup services for you. Some do but a lot don’t,” added Reeman.

Even if there are financial and other penalties in place, should your provider lose data that will be of little comfort if you go out of business.

You also need to contend with increasing mobility and access to so many free and cheap services that are making the landscape of what needs to be looked after more complex. Users are storing data on smartphones and tablets, and using services like Dropbox for personal and corporate information.

Is that data safe? Have you had a ‘Scooby Doo moment’ when everyone looks around and shrugs their shoulders wondering whether the questions about backup and security have been asked and adequately answered?

For all your systems and infrastructure you need to do an audit. If the accounting system went down, what would be the effects if you couldn’t recover all the invoices or orders? Ask the same sorts of questions with every system you use.

Then prioritise the core systems for the business and consider the cost of losing them. This will help prioritise what needs the most immediate attention and help you come to understand the value of a backup and recovery solution.

Look for and clean up duplicated data and consider archiving data that is no longer used. There’s little point backing up 10 copies for the same file. Fortunately, many backup tools such as Symantec’s Backup Exec can detect and manage part of this through data deduplication technology so that only one copy of the file is kept.

Once you’ve completed this review, it’s time to consider some solutions.