As the news reminds us everyday, Disaster can strike at any time and without warning. From fire or flood all the way to a zombie apocalypse, a disaster can take out your business. However, how quickly you can get back up and running is the real key and that’s where your disaster recovery plan comes into play. Lets explore how Cloud storage can help bring your business back after a disaster.
Historically, only large companies could afford the security of being able to store all their data off-site or have backup Servers running in a data center in another state or country. Now, by utilizing cloud technology, even small businesses can secure their data offsite. To help, there are companies that specialize in offering disaster recovery as a service or you can look to do it yourself. If you choose the latter method, here are a few options and things to consider.
Data Backups
The first step to securing your data through cloud storage is to first prioritize your information so you know which is the most important to restore quickly to get up and running. For vital paper documents, convert them to digital files, to easily secure them online through your cloud. You can then prioritize this data and set up a routine to regularly back it up to your off-site cloud server. How often you choose to back up the information will depend on how vital the information is in comparison with the cost for the additional storage and bandwidth of transferring the data.
Backup Servers
Once you have your data prioritized, you still need the servers to run your applications etc. With cloud storage, you can easily take regular snapshots of your production servers so that in the event of an emergency, you can move to the cloud and start up one of these snapshots which will have your servers back online in a matter of minutes.
With many of the cloud server providers you only pay for what you actually use, so in normal operating parameters you only pay for the storage of your backups of data and snapshots of servers. You wont be paying for the backup servers themselves until you actually need, them making the cloud a very cost effective disaster recovery solution even for small businesses.
Test
A disaster recovery plan is great, but you must test that it works regularly and meets your needs. Do a regular check to ensure that you can switch quickly to your backup servers in the cloud and restore the most recent data. Does everything still work, can you meet your business needs, and how long did it take to get up and running again.
Once your cloud storage system is in place, you can rest easy knowing that your small business is secured.
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