3 Tips for Using Virtualization to Back Up Your Data
Disasters. You don’t get to decide when they strike. Like most of life’s biggest inconveniences, they just happen. Unfortunately, when they do, it can mean chaos for your business.
Data loss during a disaster can lead to lost productivity, reputation damage, and unforeseen costs. Thankfully, you can prevent these headaches from happening.
How?
Virtualization.
“Virtualization offers an affordable way for small and medium businesses (SMBs) to not only save on energy costs and space requirements but to also allow for effective disaster recovery.” – Forbes
Having your data stored in an offsite virtual server is a reliable way to avoid losing it in the event of a disaster. Why? Storing your data on a virtual server means it’s no longer solely tied to a physical one.
Reputable data centers keep multiple backups of your data. If your onsite server is destroyed, stolen, or fails, your data won’t disappear with it. Your provider will be able to spin up a copy of your physical server on a virtualized one.
Your service level agreement will outline how quickly your provider can do this and restore your critical data. But you can rest assured that it will be restored.
Here are three different disaster scenarios and what you can learn from each about using virtualization to back up your sensitive data.
Weather
When you think of disasters, your first images are those that occur naturally: electrical storms, wildfires, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc.
In August 2017, Houston, Texas was hit with the second most costly natural disaster to ever strike the US: Hurricane Harvey. The storm forced many businesses to shutter their operations for weeks and caused over $125 billion in damages.
That’s not to mention the hundreds or thousands of files containing sensitive information and intellectual property that SMBs lost due to flooded physical servers.
Helpful tip:
Because disasters can destroy your onsite servers, we recommend keeping at least one copy of your virtualized server stored offsite. A service provider specializing in virtualization can help you make this happen.
Mechanical Failure
During film production, one of the crew members on Toy Story 2 accidentally entered a server command that rapidly deleted key animation files. In half a minute, nearly a year’s work disappeared.
Frustrating, but fine. The team figured they’d restore the missing files from their onsite backups. False. In the previous month, those had failed. Now what?
Thankfully, the film’s supervising technical director had an extra copy of the film’s animation files backed up on her personal computer. The film was saved and it’s likely the crew members’ jobs were, too.
“68% of SMBs test their backup systems weekly or monthly.” – Clutch
Helpful Tip:
Even without a virtual backup, the Toy Story 2 fiasco demonstrates the importance of testing your backups. For every type of backup, you want to periodically check that it’s functioning as it’s meant to.
Theft
In 2009, a NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) hard drive was stolen. It contained the personal information of individuals who possibly worked in or visited the White House during the Clinton Administration.
In addition to sending out emails to more than 15,000 individuals who may have been affected, the organization had to devote time to trying to manually locate and recover all of the lost information. The hard drive itself was never found.
Helpful Tip:
If your data is backed up to a virtual server, copies of your files may still exist outside your network. Even if someone literally steals your hardware. To prevent thieves from accessing the sensitive information on your devices or virtual server, employ data security best practices like encryption, strong passwords, and two-factor authentication.
Act now to protect your data.
In order to prevent uncontrollable crises from destroying your business data, you need to act soon. Using virtualization to back up your files is something to do before disaster strikes and you suffer the worst of consequences.
Related Blog: Virtual Servers and 4 Reasons You May Want to Consider One
