Tape Backup

How Server Backup Solutions Work

Your head will begin to spin when trying to select the right server backup solution, there are many factors that come into play when choosing the perfect one for your business.

You expect that your server backup will protect your data when it's needed the most. The last thing you need is to believe that you are backing up your server and then when something happens you come to realize that it wasn't working at all. Can I ask you what exactly was the whole purpose of purchasing the software to backup your server if it wasn't going to do its job correctly? This is not an uncommon problem, but there are things that you can do to prevent this from happening. The server hardware, data center, and the fiber connection all play an important part in the reliability. There are different strategies to backup your server's data.

The least you can do is create a partition in your hard drive and be sure to backup your server weekly or monthly depending on your needs. This is not one of the best server backup solutions. Why? Well what happens if your hard drive crashes, your backup will be affected. A partition is on your hard drive.

There is another way it's better, you install another hard drive on your server and set it up to do daily, weekly, or monthly backups. This solution to backup your server is very good, but of course there are downfalls to everything. While the cost is great, the only problem with this is if your server goes down then you will not be able to access your backup. This may not be a big deal to you.

Now for the solutions that will run you a bit more money per month, a remote backup service, or a mirrored server. Both of these will cost around $50 - $100 a month. That's a lot of money you are shelling out. But there are some advantages to using these methods. A remote backup service can be set to run daily, weekly, or monthly. How this works is if your hard drive crashes you then have the remote backup service to rely on. The downside is that there is a long recovery time, usually between 6 - 12 hours depending on how much data you have and you have to manually copy it over. A mirrored server is just what it sounds like, it will be identical to you server, but if your server goes down this acts as a backup. Most business do not require this type of solution especially at the cost.

Your best option is adding a second hard drive to your server and to use a remote server. This method works best together.