As the storm approached, my body tensed and I could feel the pressure welling up in my head as I double checked that all of our systems had a good backup.  We had a pretty solid solution in place and leveraged our small campus to automate backups to another building.  That said, there was still a looming fear that a well-placed twister could take out both facilities, and all of our data along with it.  It was a “perfect storm” scenario that we obsessed about until we fixed our vulnerable state.

A good friend of mine was as close as one could get to having their company data carried away to OZ.  She was in the data center when a tornado hit the building, peeling the roof up around the facility and scattering vehicles around the parking lot outside.  Rain was pouring in the ceiling as she stood ankle deep in water, even on a raised floor, patiently watching the black and white text of a Unix terminal for the verification of a clean shutdown as a good first step in saving their company data.

It was a wild tale of IT heroics and mettle that bards will sing of until her story becomes legendary.  I love adventure, but even with the trumpet fanfares and accolades that surely follow such acts of bravery and company loyalty, I’m going to take a solid pass.

What does your backup strategy look like?  Do you have a business continuity plan in place for when technology fails?  Are you prepared for a disaster?  While each of these questions merit their own conversations, the simplest thing to start with is having a rock-solid backup plan in place so that you can, at the very least, rebuild.

The basic rule of thumb for backing up your systems and preserving data is using the 3-2-1 method.  This involves having 3 copies of your data in 2 different places with 1 of those places being off-site.  I have personally carried tapes and backup drives off-site to store in a vault to accomplish having a sense of “remote” storage.  With today’s storage options, cloud storage has become both easily obtainable and affordable.  Having an on-site backup as well as a mirrored, cloud-based backup is easily configurable and eliminates the burden of manual processes.

I have had great success using Veeam Backup and Replication as a backup platform of choice.  Not only is it easy to set up and maintain, but it scales really well and has the built-in functionality to integrate with cloud storage like AWS and Azure.  It also allows you to set rules for when data gets stored in the cloud and how long to retain it for.  Each of these vendors will let you pilot their platform for free, so there is zero risk in deciding if the solution is a potential fit.  With newer licensing models, these solutions follow a pay-as-you-grow schema, so it stays affordable for both small and large businesses.  Veeam even has free and paid versions for personal use, so it’s super convenient to give their brand a try before making the investment.

There are plenty of good solutions out there and most vendors will let you sample their wares to get you hooked on the ease of use and varying features that today’s technology can offer.  Are you confident in your backup strategy?  Will you weather the perfect storm?