Backup Base on Need, Not Arbitrary Designation

Business continuity is an integral component of modern operations. There are a lot of reasons such solutions must be in place and manageable. For one, disasters are going to happen. These disasters may not be of the “nuclear” or “Mt. St. Helens” variety. They may just be a new intern in the server room stumbling into the wrong switch at the wrong time and shutting down the system. That would be a disaster of sorts. Unless you’ve got some solution, you would find your operations halted in a costly way for some time from such an accident.

So, it’s absolutely necessary to have some backup solution in place simply for the sake of continuity, but the next problem comes in terms of data limitations. The larger the business, the more data it generates. The more data that is generated, the more expensive storage becomes. This is especially costly if data is redundantly stored. There are just some things that aren’t relevant to forward operations. Take security tapes as an example. A security tape from five years ago doesn’t need to be taking up several gigabytes of your system. After a certain period of time, such information must be flushed simply for the sake of manageability.

Saving Time

Going through files manually to determine those which should and shouldn’t be retained is a task in and of itself. Thankfully, business continuity solutions that automate this process do exist. Certain designations can be programmed into the right retention fix so that files of a certain age or kind will automatically be deleted or saved depending on previously defined parameters. This ensures that continuity will be essentially seamless if a disaster occurs, and no relevant data loss will be sustained.

The old Schoolhouse Rock cartoon had a segment about “knowledge being power”. Well, data may not necessarily be knowledge, but it is at least half of the equation. The other half is learning what to do with such information so that it is worthwhile.

The right data retention strategy will parse through excessively diverse data to preserve the gems and dispose of the dross. It’s much like mining when you get right down to it. If you’ve ever been to a quarry, the “overburden”–the dirt on top of the “product”–must be removed before the product can be excised. Well, with any business, your relevant data is surrounded by the “dirt” of supporting information. Think of data retention strategies as a means by which the “product” of your relevant information may be excavated and securely stored so that it can make a profit. However, the analogy breaks down in terms of scope. If a sinkhole swallows up a quarry, everything is lost. If a disaster swallows your business, everything will be gone. A cloud-based data retention strategy can preserve data without visible continuity loss from an exterior perspective.

Securing Your Business

Business continuity solutions through Idealstor provide data retention solutions, as well as BDR (Backup and Data Recovery) and a host of other means by which your systems may be propped up even in the most unexpected situation. Contact us now. Thanksgiving is around the corner, and with it comes the retail holidays Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It’s time to prepare.