Data Protection: Why Should Backup Media Be Stored Offsite
If your business is in the film and media industry, then there’s a good chance you work with computers all day long. But if something were to happen and one of these machines stopped working for some reason or another (maybe because someone spilled coffee on it), would we be able to get back up running again? What about when they break down during peak times like Friday afternoon at 4 p.m.? If our offsite storage gets destroyed by fire–will any data still exist after such disasters strike!? The answer: sometimes yes; most often no! That’s why having copies stored safely away somewhere else besides inside HQ can really come in handy.
So, why might you want to store backup media offsite?
If your business has a disaster, and it can’t access all of its data, then the information on-site may be missing or damaged. Offsetting this risk by storing backups securely could save time in recovering lost productivity; after such an event is over, there will still be some work left for employees who were temporarily out due only having been made available back at their desks following cleanup efforts from any fires started during looting where necessary.
In the event of a disaster, such as a natural disaster or an armed uprising, your business can still run smoothly even when you don’t have access to the IT infrastructure. If the data center is destroyed in a fire or by a storm, then all employees need to do is go off-site and grab their backup tape from that location. Backups should be stored in separate physical locations in order to prevent perishables from excess humidity during summer. Tape copies in different secure locations could easily save your company thousands in reconstruction costs.
If anything happens to any of the copies being stored at HQ, chances are it won’t happen to all of them at once, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t store backups off-site so long as you can access them quickly.
RAID Usage
Some organizations use RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) storage systems to safeguard against data loss, even if the entire physical disk is lost. It’s also relatively cheap per gigabyte, compared with alternatives like USB drives or dedicated NAS devices. While the redundancy may be enough for most companies’ purposes, simply keeping your backup copies in RAID arrays isn’t good enough for businesses that need their records to be absolutely pristine and accurate; they should also store their backups off-site to prevent loss in case of a fire or another damage event.
Most modern tape backup systems are reliable and low cost, so there’s little reason why they shouldn’t be used as backups for live servers, provided you’ve got secure storage for tapes and a reasonably reliable backup schedule. The only problem is the physical distance between the location (server room) where your servers are, and the one where you store your tape library; transporting tapes several kilometers every time you need to perform a backup will take too much of your limited resources (time, money) and it’ll also delay backups which can be catastrophic if a server needs to be restored quickly.
If your business is in the film and media industry, then there’s a good chance you work with computers all day long. But if something were to happen and one of these machines stopped working for some reason or another (maybe because someone spilled coffee on it), would we be able to get back up…
If your business is in the film and media industry, then there’s a good chance you work with computers all day long. But if something were to happen and one of these machines stopped working for some reason or another (maybe because someone spilled coffee on it), would we be able to get back up…