With today’s companies storing more data than ever before, suffering a data breach can affect a business hard in the checkbook.
Given the risks, developing a secure data backup storage plan for your company is a critical step.
Fortunately, cloud computing provides you a wide array of options to do protect your data without making significant investments.
Unfortunately, small businesses often use more computing resources than their backup and storage plans can cover. This is typically a result of numerous storage options they tend to use. Between hard drives and a multitude of online storage solutions, business users can find it difficult to consolidate their backup and storage options.
That is why they need an efficient and comprehensive backup plan. Such a plan needs to support multi-platform storage options and have a clear outline of all the critical data. This means that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to developing a backup storage plan.
You need to consider your business needs, research available solutions, and make a decision that will benefit you most. This article focuses on the six most common storage abilities and how they can be shared to create the right storage approach for your small or medium business.
6 Common Data Storage Solutions
It’s smarter to evaluate the numerous categories of storage options rather than dwell on every technology available today
- Direct-attached storage: DAS signifies storage devices that connect directly to a server or PC. More specifically, this refers to using a USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 peripheral port. One downfall to DAS is the need to perform an ad-hoc or batch backup to copy data, meaning this may include an out-of-date variety of files.
- Private Cloud: Some companies build private infrastructures or outsource data centers from third-party cloud vendors. For small businesses, building a private data center is usually a significant. However, the cloud technologies enable even enterprise-grade resources to be delivered on a pay-per-use mode, so even SMBs can tap into private cloud storage with a company such as phoenixNAP.
- Network attached storage: A NAS device is a storage appliance that links directly to the system. It includes the attendant abilities of a file server and receives multiple storage drives. Dismissal is offered in the method of RAID abilities, as NAS supports numerous file procedures to work directly with laptops and desktops. Some NAS types offer the ability to synchronize a second remote network attached storage with volumes or designated folders.
- Disaster protected storage: As its name proposes, disaster protected storage — which can come in the form of NAS or DAS — is reinforced against the kind of catastrophes that would quickly destroy unprotected data. For instance, ioSafe claims its disaster shielded storage appliances can endure fire up to 30 minutes as well as complete submersion in water for days.
- Online storage: While it may appear intuitive to group all online storage into the same category, there are essentially two different types available. For example, Amazon cloud services are widely popular among small businesses thanks to its low price. However, there are significant security concerns that do not make it a reliable options for all small businesses. In addition to Amazon’s cloud, there are few other services such as SpiderOak and MozyPro that are explicitly designed for data backup for businesses. Cloud storage performs rather well if backing up data incrementally and there are no upfront investments. The bad news is, data retrieval may happen in an excessively long period if you require complete data recovery.
- Offline media: This is generally recognized to be tape drives, but media such as Blu-Ray discs and DVDs are occasionally for offline data backup. This “technology” may appear outdated, but don’t reject it yet. Large companies used this technique to pull them out of the gutter after severe data loss.
Data Backup Best Practices
For crucial data, companies should create two complete copies and keep them on individual physical devices. Also, a third copy would be kept offline, if possible stored at an alternative location.
Having two complete copies provides a specific measure of business steadiness, allowing organizations to continue their business as usual even with the total loss of one set of data. After all, even RAID sections may have damage for a considerable amount of time up until the array rebuild is complete.
The two copies of data should synchronize by an assortment of methods:
- The cloud
- A third-party sync application
- The sync abilities of a growing number of NAS
An offline disc temporarily aids in protecting data against unintentional mistakes and hacker attacks.
Data Storage Strategy Relies on Budget and Data Volume
The combination of storage options you will choose for your business depends on several key factors. The most important one is the volume of critical data you want to make available 24/7. The second factor is, of course, the available budget. New businesses on tight budgets have modest data need and could benefit from public cloud backup options.
A business with more significant storage needs and greater volumes of data may need to install two NAS appliances in individual offices. These can be fixed to sync with to each other over the web or VPN. They will also probably consider private cloud options or a third-party disaster recovery as a service plan.
Whatever backup storage plan the company installs, it will contribute to its feeling of safety and stability. Only that way, businesses can focus on developing their core competencies and growing their business.