A Backup is Only as Good as the Restore

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I know I sound like a broken record, but I heard another horror story about backups this week. A local graphic design firm (read: lots and lots of very important files) was having server issues. Their IT support “guy” (read: not a qualified MSP IT support firm that proactively monitors and manages your network) came in to do some work on it. I’m not privvy to the ins and nots of what happened, but in short, their server was shot and they needed to perform a data restore from their backups.

You can guess what happened. No backups. The tapes they had faithfully been rotating every week for years were useless. That brings me to my point. Backups are useless in and of themselves. The only purpose a backup – in whatever form you have it – is to be able to restore. The tricky part is backups are notoriously full of faults and errors. It doesn’t matter what program you use, they will fail at some point. That is the truth, and something most IT providers don’t want you to know. MotherG has never worked with a client that had perfect backups. It just doesn’t happen.

So what to do? Your company needs backups. You don’t want to be like the Chicago graphic design firm who is now without years of hard work. What do you need to know? Here are three things to ask your IT support company:

1. Are my backups monitored daily? (does your IT firm receive an alert if a backup has failed?)
2. If my backup fails, what is theremediation process? (how long do they wait before looking for a root cause?)
3. How does my backup solution fit into my entire disaster recovery solution? (your backups are just a small part of how you will recover from a disaster).

MotherG is always happy to lend a hand if you aren’t confident in the restorability of your backups. Call us anytime at (800) 676-7374.