You keep a spare tire in your trunk. You change the batteries in your smoke detector regularly. You know where the safest place is in a tornado. You and your children all know to dial 9-1-1 in an emergency. But, when is the last time you performed a disaster recovery test on your office server?

Chances are the answer to that question is never.

Backups are Worthless. Restores are Priceless.

Remember that there is really no way, short of an actual failure, to be sure that the time and money you have invested in your backup solution is worthwhile unless you test the recovery process. As this South Florida computer network support company always says: “Backups are worthless. Restores are priceless.”

Maybe you are thinking that this seems like a lot of trouble for something that probably won’t ever happen to you. Before you dismiss all of this as unimportant, ask yourself these questions:

1. How would it affect your business if you arrive tomorrow morning and your server is not running and won’t come back up?
2. What will it cost to pay your employees while they are waiting for the server to be repaired?
3. What will happen when your clients find out you can’t service them in the way they have come to expect?

Backing up your Network Server is not Enough

Someone should be verifying that your backups are actually working and can be restored in the event that you need them. After all, you will want to be sure that if you experience a complete failure, say due to fire or flood, you will be able to recover quickly. [You are remembering to take your backup media offsite every day aren’t you?]

If you are not testing your backup system regularly, you are not alone. Most small businesses do not test the ability to restore their backups, because it is often a time consuming and expensive procedure.

Testing Traditional Backup Methods is Like Pulling Teeth

Most small businesses are using Windows Backup, Veritas Backup Exec or Acronis to protect their network servers. This means that an near-identical copy of the server is stored either on tape or on an external hard drive.

The best way of ensuring quick recovery of a server-based backup like this is to restore to completely different hardware.  Most times network companies will test the restoration on the server in which it was created. This is not a valid test. If your server died and it to needed to be replaced, you may not be able to get that exact model server again. Without testing it on completely different hardware, you won’t know if you are able to restore it or not.

Once the second server is restored, you need to test it to make sure everything is functioning properly. You will want to make sure that all user accounts are intact, that the users’ rights are correct, your mail can be read and your documents and databases are still accessible.

This is a very involved process to say the least.

Managed Services Providers offer Smarter Server Backups

Your computer network support company has probably recommended that you implement a more robust backup strategy as part of their annual review of your business and technology. If you have held off on implementing a more robust backup solution because of cost, it is probably worth you reaching back out to your favorite local Managed Services Provider. New technology has made it affordable to have a server that does more than just make a copy of your data.

The best backup strategy will do these three things for you:

1. Allow you to test a full restore as often as once a month.
2. Copy your data more frequently than once a day – perhaps as frequently as every 15 minutes.
3. Actually step in for your server in the event of a failure.
4. Automatically send your backup images offsite through the internet to at least one, and preferably two, secure data centers that are not geographically close to your business.

A top tier computer network support company (like this mid-Michigan network support and managed services provider) will be able to provide a solution that provides all of these items (and maybe more).

They should even suggest placing the backup server in an area of your office away from your server. Imagine arriving in your office to find that a leaking roof has damaged both your production and your backup server!

Right after Ensuring your Data is able to be Recovered is the Speed at which you can be back to Normal

You also need to consider how long it might take to recover from a failure.

8:00AM – You are unable to log into the network. You call your Managed Services Provider.
8:15AM – Quick troubleshooting by support has determined that an onsite visit it necessary.
9:15AM – Onsite tech determined that two hard drives need to be replaced and a full system restore is necessary.
1:15PM – HP arrives within their four-hour response to replace the two drives. Tech begins restore.
5:15PM – Restore completes. Tech reboots server and prays that it boots cleanly.

Even if the backup was 100% successful, you have lost an entire day.

If the backup was not successful, your technical folks may be spending the night to reinstall the Windows operating system, reinstalling all of your applications, restoring the data again and then attempting to match the hundreds of custom system settings that made your network special. Chances are that you will be feeling the after-shocks of this for a week or more.

Managed Backup Systems offer Rapid Recovery and Virtualization

Newer backup systems offered by computer support companies (like this mid-Michigan network support and managed services provider) offer virtualization in addition to standard backups.

With a backup system that supports virtualization, your computer network support company can virtualize your server remotely as quickly as an hour. If the failure is during non-business hours, they can even have you back up and running before you arrive in your office.

Here is how the scenario above would have played out with a virtualized backup system:

8:00AM – You are unable to log into the network. You call your Managed Services Provider.
8:15AM – Quick troubleshooting by support has determined that the primary server is down and cannot be repaired quickly. Tech initiates a virtualization of your server on the backup system.
9:30AM – Virtual restore completes. Tech reboots server and employees get back to work.

The primary server can now be repaired and placed back into production at a convenient time.

If you never have a failure, then it is less expensive to have done nothing. The moment you experience any type of failure or disaster, the cost of implementing a solid backup and disaster recovery plan becomes far less expensive than the cost of doing nothing.

This article was contributed by KI Technology Group. They are a managed services provider in East Lansing that specializes in providing technology solutions to small businesses with 10 to 150 employees.