The Best Backup Technology for Your Business

What factors should your IT department consider when deciding on a data backup strategy?

All businesses, large and small, need to back up their data, but backups to tape aren’t always reliable. Moving away from tape storage can help companies survive through a disaster in the event that backup tapes sustain damage.

Businesses generally turn to one of three options to replace tape backup:

1. Disaster Recovery as a Service
2. A physical backup appliance or backup to disk
3. Cloud Services – Stored offsite in a private or public cloud

How to select the backup technology that’s best suited to your business? Ask the following questions to help you make the decision:

1. How Fast Is the Storage?

Ask how much data you need stored, and ask for an estimate of how long it will take to back it all up. Whether performing incremental backups or a once-a-week total system backup, the speed of the service or device does matter.

2. How Easy Is It to Scale and Grow the Storage?

Understand what happens when your organization’s storage needs change. Today, you may only need 30 terabytes of data, but if your needs grow, data compression can only go so far. You’ll want to ensure that any backup solution being considered has the capacity and management capability to scale with future storage needs.

3. Is There an Archival Option?

Save time and money. Consider a storage option that offers both backup and archive functionality (or is compatible with your archival solution).

4. How Does the Cloud Fit into Your Storage Plan?

According to McAfee, nearly two-thirds of organizations use cloud storage. Data in the cloud must be backed up and archived too, so if you choose cloud storage, remember to look for a backup solution that can easily accomplish this.