How often should I be backing up my servers?

Dan,
If you were to lose all the data on the hosted servers would your company survive?

Extreme question but that is why we back up data to make sure we can recover from a disaster. If the answer is yes because you have local copies of the data then the hosted backup service may not be needed but if the answer is no then I highly recommend adding some form of backup of those servers.

I also recommend that you check pricing of other online backup providers to see if you can get better pricing or use those prices to negotiate better prices with your hosted provider.

Jay

Dan,

My impression is that you do not know for sure if your vendor partner is backing up to data on these servers they are hosing for you in their 'cloud'. Most vendors for the services you mentioned offer a backup service as back of the agreement between your company and theirs. Regardless of who is performing your backup it is critical to your business that a backup procedure is implemented and followed.

Depending on the speed and storage size of the backup media you choose, the amount of data you are backing up, the amount of time you have to backup the data depends on the schedules and methods used. A lot of small businesses have the luxury of performing a full backup each night. If you cannot complete a full backup based on the length of the backup window, saving money of backup media, etc. you will need to setup a schedule to run a full backup starting Friday night and incremental or differential backups Monday through Thursday.

What do I mean by a full, incremental or differential backup? Full backup is properly defined as a backup of all of the selected data regardless of the last backup state. Incremental and differential back up data that have been modified since the last backup. They just use different methods to determine how the program determines that the data has changed.

I would also recommend that you ask or implement backup software to work with the physical media. Make sure that your backup software can at minimum, backup what is known as a system state, which backs up the key data for the operating system that will assist in recovering the server in the case of service outages due to server failure. You also want to make sure that you can specify more than one type of backup process that is user defined. Lastly you would be best to have an automated task scheduler inside of the software.

Hope this helps.

Dan -
I think a few more questions/answers are needed to give you an 'actionable answer'. If I can nit-pick on your posting to clarify a few issues:
1) 3 hosted cloud servers.... I assume this means you and your staff make different remote connections for different things. a) E-Mail & document sharing; b) Accounting and record keeping; c) Business research and transactions might be generic descriptions of those three servers...
2) Your office computers are 'backing up' to the cloud. Since you are asking about an additional fee service, I assume you are NOT using Mozy/Carbonite/similar services. Are you referring to copying daily/local work product? Or, are you referring to the data on your hosted servers? (You need solutions for both.)

Jay's answer poses a proper frame of reference. You need to be able to answer the questions from top-to-bottom (or go from bottom-to-top). What will you do to recover WHEN: Your smartphone is lost/stolen/fails; Your laptop/desktop fails or is stolen; Your internal server or network fails; Your hosted data or communications server fails; Your hosting provider goes offline or bankrupt?

There are two sets of answers for these questions. First, is how to prevent an interruption of service - you don't want any hiccups in your daily processes and transactions. Second, is in the case of major catastrophe, how quickly can you rebuild your whole system in another building, city or region?

Similarly, there are two types of data. One has definite milestones, the letter and proposal you typed yesterday, collected data from sources, the drawings or plans that are created within a time period. Once created, they remain the same (although each week/day/hour a new revision may exist).
The other group of data is 'continuous'. Typically, this is the business data in your ERP system. All day long, people are are contributing various transactions, events, entries. These are the routine entries each day that are nearly impossible to recreate/re-enter - especially as fewer transactions have actual, literal paper trails. Being able to protect the different data types and sources requires different solutions.

Rather than quick answers, I think 'backing up' needs to be part of a comprehensive strategy that looks at a lot of issues.

Hope this helps!
Jim

@ Jay - If we were to lose that data it would be very rough to bounce back.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I feel foolish for not having addressed this question earlier, but from your responses it's obvious those servers should be backed up as well. I think the easiest thing will be to talk with my hosting provider... assuming their backup costs aren't through the roof I'll probably go with them. Thanks again for your contributions.

That's a great question Dan. Without knowing what you are running on each particular server, I would say at a minimum, you should be backing up nightly. Generally speaking you could do a full backup one day, and run incremental backups for the next six. If you are not backing up your servers, you are putting your company at risk of losing potentially vital information. How would you recover if your accounting information was nowhere to be found? Today, many small businesses are pulling together business continuity plans, and as a part of that, implementing technology that can back up as often as every 15 minutes. That may sound like overkill to some, but for many companies, losing data mid day can be a serious issue. There are a lot of considerations out there, make sure you are backing up, but think beyond backups, because that is one small part of a full disaster recovery plan. For more information please consult my blog.

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I don't recommend using virtual servers on the internet for backup up company critical data of any description, not least for legal and security reasons.

Do you use encryption before sending the data to the servers, and what do you use? If the hosting provider has the keys (or access to them), this is no good.

How much data do you back up?

IMHO there is no replacement for in-house backup. Cloud solutions are asking for problems. For a start, what happens if your systems go down and you have no internet? What if the provider you go with has a serious problem? The "cloud" is no different to any other data center. Sure, nice fluffy name, but that is all.

If your business data is critical, do in-house backup (multiple copies) and stick one in a fire proof safe and take the other off-site.

Regarding legal issues - this is a minefield. If your data leaves the country boundary (e.g. you are in the UK and the data center is physically located in the USA) then there could be problems. Imagine if you discovered your corporate data was really on servers in China or Iran? What then??

The "cloud" (internet) has its uses, but people are really starting to use it inappropriately.

I hope you use strong encryption, too. Just saying the "cloud" is "private" is insufficient.

Backing up your local systems need not be a nightmare. I'm available to talk to you if want to send me an e-mail.

It seems that your data is at risk without the back up. Usually an automated daily back would suffice but you may also want to look into a disaster recovery solution (possibly onsite and offsite) whether it be physical or even a virtual cloud back up solution. Depending on your industry there may even be requirements in terms of your data back up solution. Sometimes its best to go with the better safe than sorry approach.

How often you should backup depends entirely on what the data is. If you are Amazon, maybe once per hour, but if you use it as an archive of other systems, then maybe once per week is sufficient. If you can tell us what data you are dealing with and how often it is changed, we can advise better.

Who are you currently hosting with if you don't mind me asking?

I know that Atum offers managed dedicated hosting plans with instant DAILY backups that are included in all their plans. For more information, take a look at www.atum.com

Why do you say that?

Virtual hosting back up systems are actually superior to physical servers. For example, if there is an operating system failure, your back up will be running within minutes guaranteeing no downtime. There's latest technology performing scheduled daily, weekly and monthly backups of your servers. You can restore custom databases, web servers and integrated applications by simply moving your server over to a different virtual host and replacing it without a waiting time. You are even given the option to back up your "backed up" files. Security and legal reasons are not an issue as well, as you are able to have total control of your servers.

Also, if you outsource your IT, with a company on the same level as Atum, your servers are stores in a tier 4 bomb proof data center with 3 internet back bone connections (in case of a power outage), among many other benefits, instead of your own house all for a very reasonably price.

Security is definitely not an issue with a dedicated virtual server but it's entirely a personal preference.

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