Own a business that depends on data that is stored on a server? Making sure this data is backed up is crucial, because if you lose it, your business could potentially go under. The data could be someone's wedding photos if you own a wedding photography business, or customer records with sales data for a retail business. No matter the situation, it's important that you follow a simple rule that will help ensure your data is safe no matter what happens.
What Is The 3-2-1 Data Backup Rule?
The 3-2-1 rule is a well known rule in data management that is designed to keep your data safe in any situation. It involves having three copies of your data. Two of them are to be on-site at your business, and one of them is to be off-site. This will protect yourself in any situation where you need to recover your data.
On-site Copies
You should have two copies of your data that remain on-site, with those two copies being in completely different places. For example, you may have an active server that you are working off of that contains all of your working files. The server could use standard hard drives, or hard drives in a RAID configuration. Even if the RAID is backing up your files, they are technically not in two locations. If the entire RAID fails, you lose both copies of your data.
It will be ideal to have that second copy of your data backed up to a second location, one that is completely separate from your server. This could mean using LTO tapes that do daily incremental backups to an entirely different storage medium. It could also involve using a second server that mirrors the main server that you work from.
The goal of having two separate sets of storage is that if your primary server goes down, you can be back up and running instantly. As a business, you cannot afford to have down time, and this will help you recover quickly.
The Off-site Copy
In a worst-case scenario, you could lose both local copies. There could be a fire that destroys everything in the building, or someone breaks in and steals your physical servers. That is why you need the off-site copy.
While you can manually copy files over to an external hard drive that you take home, this has several problems. The hard drive can fail from being moved so often, and you can forget to do this backup regularly. You are better off using software that automatically backs up new data incrementally to the cloud. By storing this data in the cloud, it is completely off the premises of the building and will be safe in a total disaster recovery situation.
For more information about backing up your data, work with a company that specializes in disaster recovery backup software.
