Cloud backup for telecommunications and computing
Do you have critical servers or PCs on your network? Of course they are, in today’s business they are essential. But does your communication system use a server? You may not know it, but it’s worth finding out. Solutions from companies like ShoreTel may not depend on the server for voice traffic, but critical applications like voicemail and voicemail storage are on the server. Other solutions from companies like Cisco or Microsoft are connecting servers, which makes the backup strategy even more important. Many companies have backup strategies for their servers; sometimes it’s local, sometimes in the cloud, or both. In general, it is recommended that companies employ a strategy that distributes risk between local and cloud backups for their communication servers.
A blended strategy can be a business solution that means the difference between getting you back up and running in minutes or days. Local backups are great as you can get your servers up and running quickly if you experience failure, as you can quickly and easily restore service using your stored databases. Generally, the local backup will be done in several places, including a partition on the server, a separate drive on the server, a dedicated backup server, a tape drive, a NAS (network attached storage) device or even a flash drive attached to the server. . But what if the backup is corrupted or there is a disaster that renders them useless?
This is where cloud backups become important. Generally, a cloud backup will back up the entire designated device the first time, and subsequent backups only include the files that have changed. Typically, this first backup will take approximately several hours to a day. Depending on the service chosen, this could clog your local or wide area network if the backup is done during business hours. Other services take a different approach and do backups in the background. This means that the initial backup may take a little longer, but you probably won’t notice the effect on your network. However, in both cases, the size of the drive will affect the time it will take to back up the drive.
There are many different companies that can provide this service. One of the largest and oldest is Carbonite. The Carbonite method can be purely cloud-based or on-premises and cloud-based. Carbonite’s pure cloud backup for servers starts with 250GB of space and goes to 500GB and then goes up. The mixed service offers a local appliance that is backed up to the server as well as a drive backup in the Carbonite data center. In the mixed scenario, Carbonite provides and maintains the device for a monthly fee. Setting up your pure cloud backup or mixed backup is easy, the initial setup only takes a few minutes. Carbonite backup runs in the background, so businesses generally don’t even notice it on their network.
In conclusion, if you are only doing backups locally, or not at all, it is highly recommended to consider a mixed strategy so that your business is covered regardless of the nature of the failure. This strategy will position your servers and your business for continuity and sustainability.