Here’s Why BDR is WAY Better Than Backing Up Your Data With Tape

Data backup, regardless of its form, is a critical component of any modern IT infrastructure. If you’re not using data backup or disaster recovery, your business could be risking crippling data loss. Even if your infrastructure is protected from typical threats like viruses and malware, these security solutions aren’t going to prevent a devastating hardware failure.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what your current state of data backup is; the fact remains that you need to have some sort of contingency plan put into place in the event of a data loss disaster. Businesses that are incapable of recovering after losing data tend to be out of business within the next year, so it’s your job as the business owner to ensure that not only your own livelihood is secured, but your employees’, too.

Granted, this doesn’t mean that all data backup practices are considered equal. Most organizations currently use tape backup, which is far from an ideal backup solution. Here’s why tape backup is considered an antiquated backup system, and how BDR can replace and even surpass it.

The State of Tape Backup
Tape backup may have been useful in the past, but it’s quickly grown out of style in the business environment. The primary reason that tape is inefficient for a backup solution is due to it being a manual process that’s prone to user error. If an employee forgets to set the tape, then that’s a whole day’s worth of data that could be lost. Furthermore, tape backups are extremely resource-intensive and are generally performed after hours to avoid downtime. This means that tape backups can only be performed once a day, at the most. To top it all off, restoring from a tape is cumbersome. Depending on how much data your business has, it could take anywhere from hours to days to restore your data.

The Benefits of BDR
Compared to tape backup, a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution provides several benefits that make it a better choice for the continuity-minded business owner. Here are three of the benefits offered by a BDR solution:

• Multiple backups per day: The BDR’s snapshot backup technology is capable of taking images of your data as it appears at a specific time. Any further backups taken of the data will only take into account files that have been changed, meaning that backups are less intensive, and more of them can happen throughout the workday. These backups are then sent to both the cloud for quick deployment, and to a secure off-site data center, where your data can be accessed in your desperate time of need.
• Rapid recovery speed: Thanks to your data backups being stored in the cloud, recovery can happen quickly and efficiently. There is no tape backup to deploy. It’s simply a matter of receiving the data from the cloud, and deploying it to your infrastructure. You can experience a data loss disaster, and be back in business relatively quickly-- far faster than any tape backup solution can offer.
• Server virtualization: Best of all, the BDR device can temporarily take the place of your server, in the event it falls victim to hardware failure or a similar disaster rendering it inoperable. This gives you ample time to find replacement parts and repair your downed server while minimizing downtime in the process.

Preferred can equip your business with a BDR solution that suits the needs of your organization. To learn more, give us a call at 708-781-7110.