Remote Backup Your Computers
A Backup Article Contributed by Melissa Larose
Remote Backup Your Computers
Remote backup may be just the thing you need to complete those routine backup plans. Disaster recovery may benefit from them as well. Remote backup has been available for some time now but the recent events and threats of terrorism have given new life to the remote backup service. Whether you are a large corporation of just a small at home firm, you may benefit greatly from using a remote backup service.
What are the Benefits of Remote Backup?
The obvious benefit of a remote backup service is the backup up runs automatically. There is usually no need of intervention from your IT team for the backup to run. The remote backup is scheduled according to your specifications so your designated remote backup schedule is easy to maintain without concern for the reassignment of personnel.
The remote backup plan can allow for multiple version storage. Depending on what your recovery situation is you can restore from any of a variety of points in time. The latest remote backup packages are updated with better bandwidth control and no need for hardware to configure on your part.
Encryption of data on your servers prior to the data being sent to the remote site protects your data from hackers and snoopers. Traditional tape backups can't compete with security like encryption.
Remote backup provides your company with a mobile recovery platform. Recover your data from anywhere your business needs to begin again.
Remote Backup Issues
There are a few issues with remote backup that need to be addressed. Your remote site is just as susceptible to electrical outages and disaster events as your original site is. These disasters can corrupt and lose data. Remote data can only be one layer of a recovery plan. There must be other portions of the plan to cover issues such as this.
Depending on the size and need of your company remote backup may not warrant the risk of corrupt data. Check your data sets and test recovery of the data from the remote site before committing to the service. Better safe than sorry that your data is safe but can't be recovered properly.
Remote Backup As Part of a Bigger Plan
After researching remote backup services your company may decide that the advantages do not warrant using it as an integral part of a disaster recovery plan. Accessing your data through the Internet and having it sit on servers thousands of miles away may not appeal to your IT staff or your upper management.
You may instead want to implement a backup plan that keeps your data closer to home and physically at your reach where you control the creation of tapes or hard drives of your data instead of allowing a remote staff do so. Keep the remote backup idea in mind, though, for emergency backup and access to data. It can't hurt to have an encrypted and secure version of your network and data stored away for safekeeping. If the cost is prohibitive, consider storing just the data for emergency recovery.
