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Data backup and recovery

Whatever brings about data loss is bound to cause an organization to suffer - not only from the loss of the data itself but from loss in employee productivity during the time it takes to restore information from a backup set. Having said this, it becomes clear that data backup and recovery is, without a doubt, one of the most significant aspects of a business continuity plan.

When you are planning to make a data backup and recovery, you must ask yourself a number of questions to help you make a decision on how, when and what data will be backed up. These include the following:

Making a data backup and recovery should ideally be done at off-peak hours when system usage is low. However, due to the type of data being backed up this is not always possible. Considerations must be made as to when key system to create a data backup and recovery.

It is highly recommended that backup media (containing data) is stored off-site in case of a natural disaster, fire, leak, etc. It would also be wise to keep a copy of the software required to install and restore operating systems, database servers, data backup and recovery, and so on.

Classifying the importance of your data will help you decide if you need to create a data backup and recovery, how it should be backed up and when it should be backed up. Critical data (such as financial data, databases, etc) will take priority and should have a long-term redundant backup set, whereas data of less importance should be backed up daily and easily be recoverable.

Bringing a critical system back online would normally be done as soon as possible. Your data backup and recovery plan depends a lot on the time it takes to recover a system. Data should be classified by priority and restored in sequence.

Data backup and recovery that changes daily should be backed up daily. The rate at which your data changes will reflect your decision on how often the data should be backed up.

As well as knowing what information the data contains so that you can identify it as critical, confidential, etc, it's important to note that although data may not seem important to you, it might be to someone else. This will help you determine when and how you should make a data backup and recovery.

Make sure that you have the right hardware and enough media needed to perform a backup. Choosing backup media is an important factor for data backup and recovery process.