Back-up & Disaster Recovery

Don't let a disaster put you out of business

Data discs

Data backup is the act of storing a copy of files or data to a separate storage location so that in the event those files are lost or damaged, they can be restored. Disaster recovery is the act of restoring those files and data. Although each is a different business continuity and IT security solution, many companies are combining data backup and disaster recovery into one comprehensive solution for easier and faster restores.

Today, technology gains have improved our ability to recover from a server outage or natural disaster quickly. The key to limiting downtime is to design resilient networks and to create reliable recovery plans. 

Apple has an excellent built-in backup feature called Time Machine. Time Machine will automatically back up all of your team’s files, including apps, music, photos, email, documents, and system files. For small businesses and freelancers, an external hard drive connected to your Mac is often the best option. For larger companies, we use a Network Attached Storage (NAS). It allows you to back up each of your teams’ Macs to a central location. After an initial backup takes place, Time Machine simply backs up files that have been changed since the last backup while your team keeps working.

A NAS is a device that is connected to your company network that allows users to store and retrieve their files and folders in a central location. It’s like having your own company cloud back-up within the office, providing your team with fast access to central files without the cost of subscription-based services. We can also set up your NAS so that your company data is always accessible via the internet so that your employees can work from anywhere on any connected device 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

We use industry-leading technology from Synology that allows our clients to back-up all of their important data, after which regular incremental file back-ups take place, which means that only files that have been changed from the original versions are backed up, saving time and bandwidth.

For small businesses on a limited budget, subscription-based cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Onedrive, and iCloud offer a low-cost option. These services duplicate folders on your hard-drive in the cloud. Any changes that you make to files on your hard-drive are also made to the files held in the cloud. If your files or folders get deleted, corrupted, or infected by viruses, it is possible to recover them for up to 30 days. However, cloud storage services are not well suited to significant issues such as hard-drive failures and crashes.

With a hybrid cloud backup solution, you’re essentially backing up data on a local device and in a secure offsite data center for redundancy. You always have a secure local copy of your data, but you also have it stored offsite. Also, your machines are backed up to the local device first, so you don’t have to worry about the replication to the cloud affecting the performance of machines or your Internet connection. The best practice, in this case, would be to back up from the local device to a secure offsite data center after business hours (automatically, of course).