Data Backup in Sacramento

What you need to know about data backup in Sacramento

Even though business practices have changed hugely over recent years, especially since the move to cloud-first IT operations, many of the old principles still remain in force. One of them is the need for an off-site backup of your data. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to what you need to know about data backup in Sacramento.

Backing up to a physical device is now fairly niche

In the old days, backing up business data typically meant storing it to tapes. One set of tapes was stored on the premises and another set was taken to an off-site storage location. These days, that process is now largely seen as being more hassle than it’s worth. The exception is if you have an unreliable internet connection. This is much less of an issue than it used to be, but can still apply to some companies, especially if they are located in rural areas.

That said, even if you are concerned about your internet connection, it may still be worth looking at the possibility of backing up to the cloud as well as to one or two physical devices. That way you increase your options, especially in the event of losing access to your business premises.

In this context it may be helpful to remember that you do not need to take a full backup every time. You can intersperse full backups with incremental backups (anything which has changed since the last backup) and differential backups (anything which has changed since the last full backup). Additionally, data is compressed before being transmitted to or from the cloud, which again, helps to relieve the amount of bandwidth needed to back-up and restore data.

Last but by no means least, you may have the option of backing up to a physical device and then sending it to a data backup vendor to be uploaded to a cloud and then stored off-site.

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Even if you work in the cloud you need to back up your data elsewhere

If you’re working in the cloud, then any data backed up to the same cloud is the equivalent of an “on-site” copy of your data. It is long-established best-practice to have an additional copy of your data held off-site. Traditionally this had been to safeguard against loss of access to the main premises. This can still hold true in private clouds, but is much less of an issue in public clouds.

Today, the more pressing reason for keeping an off-site copy of your data is to protect against erroneous deletion (accidental or deliberate) and also for protection against cyber attacks. In this context it’s important to understand that public cloud vendors only protect their platform against external threats. It is down to each client (or “tenant”) to protect themselves against their accesses being misused by staff or compromised.

You may be able to back-up to a public cloud even if you have sensitive data

Backing up data to a public cloud is very different from working in a public cloud. The reason is that the data can be encrypted on your servers and kept encrypted not just on its journey to the public cloud, but once it is there. Ideally, you’ll keep control of your keys for maximum security. If you need to restore from it, it will be transported, encrypted, back to your servers and decrypted there.

That said, there are some technical challenges to backing up to a public cloud, but a good data backup vendor will be able to handle them for you. There may also be some legal/compliance issues to manage and you will need to check for yourself how these may apply to you. If you are concerned about them, you still have the alternative of backing up to a private cloud.

Data backups are only part of a disaster recovery solution

Data backups are an integral part of any disaster-recovery, but, in and of themselves, they are not the whole part. Basically, you then need to think about how users would then be able to work with the data. For example, what would they do for an operating system and applications?

The public cloud could be used to supply these, but then you’d have to think about whether or not your particular data could be kept in it without encryption. You’d also have to think about how you’d decrypt your data and get it into a working state. Another option would be to use a (second) private cloud and set it up with everything you need to start up operations again.

If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced Data backup provider in Sacramento, please click here now to contact Salient IT.