When thinking about General Backups & Disaster Recovery, the word inexpensive is not one of the first things that come to mind. But it should!
After a major issue, we often hear that magical sentence: “Did you have it backed up?” Unfortunately, most of the times it’s a little too late. But why is that? Well, major corporations used to charge significant amounts of money for a good contingency plan, or as it is better referenced today as Backup & Archive solutions.
As time went by and technology got exceedingly faster and more available, so too did once gargantuan prices plummet and these solutions were not as magical or rare anymore. Meaning that bad stigma that was left from the past is now gone and new opportunities have opened for techies to embrace.
Backup and Archiving solutions are now spread on all sorts of mediums. From that archaic Tape-System & dusty hard drive sitting at home to 24/7 Uptime Cloud Solutions, which not so surprisingly, considering the technological uproar we’ve had, are not lagging behind and are a primary solution for most businesses and enterprises.
While we mention different types of storage units, it is vital to know what they do right, or more specifically, what they do right for us. Depending on the situation an entity faces, one solution could prove to be less cost-effective than the other. There simply is no one choice. It comes down to the careful deliberation of how the wanting entity operates.
Best explanations come with examples
For example, in the case of a power surge, hypothetically speaking, a company loses some of its stored data. There are a few questions that they need to ask themselves at this point.
Due to the nature of their business, do they need it
- ASAP
- Later is fine
- It can wait
The reasoning behind this is if you don’t need the data right away and you are not dealing with a critical business, why waste money on that 24/7 RAAT (Ready At Any Time) high paid solution just looming around in the back of your server rooms?
If you need something archived for a lot later, maybe LTO Tapes are the way to go. They will suit your needs better and pay themselves off, in the long run, a lot more than a 24/7 Cloud Solution that you don’t even know what features it even has and Vice Versa.
Today, you can also find solutions that abstract all of this technical Jibber Jabber away and gives you an interface only that you know and love.
A file archiving software, for example, will give you a simple mount point address for your system which you can browse as you would any folder on your machine. Unknowingly by the user, this is connected to a much more elaborate mixture of previously mentioned storage media, headaches that don’t plague you anymore.
Choose what is best for you!
Before choosing, get to know your needs well. Only then can you make the right choice. Being unaware may cost you tons more than simply having researched what is cost-effective for your assets and type of business.
