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What would happen to your business data in the event of a disaster or outage? Our tips on data recovery look at how your business can improve data recovery times. What would happen to your business if you experienced a catastrophic data loss? Would your business survive? The statistics are alarming, 43% of businesses never re-open after a major disaster. A well-planned data recovery strategy can deliver improved resilience with predictable costs and no unscheduled downtime. It will also allow you to sleep at night!

Below are some points to consider when compiling your Data Recovery plan.

Identify your data recovery needs

Data Recovery is vital for the survival of your business. Your data defines and separates your business from any other in the market. If failure should occur at any level of your infrastructure it can be felt across the business. You must ask yourself; how would your business survive a disaster? And what pro-visions do you have in place for your business to continue after?

Understand the risks

Data loss can range from the accidental deletion of files; to the failure of your entire site. Without data recovery precautions in place you are putting your organization at risk. IT failure is considered to be the most common threat to businesses, with electrical, hardware and software failure also posing considered risks. The threat of fire and natural disaster, although considered less likely can have the most devastating consequences. Findings from a CBI study indicate that a high level of disruptions in 2008 and 2009 were due to extreme weather incidents such as snow, flood or high winds.

Assess how critical your data is

The key aspect of data recovery is understanding just how critical your data is. By compiling an assessment on the risks to your business you can then develop a tiered recovery strategy that will ensure all levels of your infrastructure can be recovered in the event of a disaster.

Assess how easily you can recover a file

Data backup is required by all businesses. With legal requirements tightening and data volumes growing out of control, traditional tape backup is no longer a reliable or cost effective means of meeting compliance levels. Managed Online Data Backup services enable you to instantly recover files within seconds and duplicate data to make the most of your storage; saving resources and reducing costs. Data is encrypted during the backup process to offer the highest level of security and is ready for recovery if needed.

Consider what the impact of a server failure would be

Assessment for data recovery calls for you to consider the maximum amount of downtime you can afford for any system before the impact becomes critical to business operations. You can define your data recovery policy according to how critical that system is, the chance of failure and how much you are willing to spend to minimize recovery time.

Assess how easily you could recover your systems

The process of re-installing an operating system, its service packs and updates, along with applications and new device drivers can take hours or even days, contributing to your overall recovery time. Prior to the lengthy process of application installation and data restoration, a compatible system is re-quired, adding yet more downtime to that ticking clock. The reality is that system failure could result in over week of downtime till your system is back up and running.

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