Data Backup and Recovery Solutions for Businesses Implementing Cloud Backups and Disaster Recovery Plans
Cloud Disaster Recovery: Best Practices for Data Backup and Recovery in the Cloud
As businesses continue to adopt cloud computing, it's more important than ever to have a solid disaster recovery plan in place. From natural disasters to cyber-attacks, there are a variety of potential threats that could disrupt cloud operations and cause data loss. That's why implementing cloud disaster recovery best practices is crucial for businesses that want to protect their data and ensure business continuity.
In this article, I'll explore some of the key best practices for data backup and recovery in the cloud, and provide real-world examples of companies that have successfully implemented these practices.
1. Define Recovery Objectives
The first step in developing a cloud disaster recovery plan is to define your recovery objectives. This involves identifying what data and applications are critical to your business operations and how quickly you need to recover them in case of a disaster. By defining your recovery objectives, you can develop a plan that is tailored to your specific needs and helps you prioritize your recovery efforts.
2. Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
In addition to defining recovery objectives, it's important to conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify potential threats and their impact on your business. This analysis helps you understand the criticality of your applications and data and their recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). By conducting a BIA, you can develop a more comprehensive disaster recovery plan that covers all potential risks and minimizes their impact on your business operations.
3. Choose the Right Cloud Disaster Recovery Solution
There are a variety of cloud disaster recovery solutions available on the market, so it's important to choose one that meets your specific needs. Look for a solution that offers features like automated failover, data replication, and strong security measures. Some popular cloud disaster recovery solutions include AWS Disaster Recovery, Azure Site Recovery, and Google Cloud DRaaS.
4. Regularly Back Up Data
Backing up your data regularly is essential for disaster recovery in the cloud. Make sure to store backups in multiple locations and test your backups regularly to ensure they are working properly. You should also consider using backup encryption to protect your data from unauthorized access.
5. Test Disaster Recovery Plans
Regularly testing your disaster recovery plans is crucial to ensure that they work as expected. This involves running simulations of potential disasters and testing your recovery processes to make sure they are effective. By testing your disaster recovery plans, you can identify any gaps or weaknesses in your system and make improvements where necessary.
6. Monitor Data and Applications
Continuous monitoring of your data and applications is essential for detecting and responding to potential threats in the cloud. Consider using tools like cloud monitoring and threat detection to identify anomalies and potential security breaches. By staying vigilant, you can quickly respond to any issues and prevent data loss or business disruption.
Real-World Examples
Some companies that have successfully implemented cloud disaster recovery best practices include Netflix, Salesforce, and Zoho. Netflix uses a multi-region strategy for disaster recovery, while Salesforce uses a combination of AWS and its own data centers. Zoho has implemented a cloud disaster recovery solution that includes automated failover and strong security measures.
In conclusion, cloud disaster recovery is crucial for protecting your data and ensuring business continuity in the cloud. By following best practices like conducting a BIA, defining recovery objectives, choosing the right disaster recovery solution, regularly backing up data, testing disaster recovery plans, and monitoring data and applications, you can mitigate risks and quickly recover from disasters in the cloud.
Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
Effective business operations depend on thorough planning -- foreseeing potential scenarios, outlining appropriate responses, and anticipating the consequences of an unexpected event. And when your business runs on servers, data backup and recovery are crucial elements of your business's survival.
Data disasters can be the result of human or hardware errors. In any case, safeguarding against data loss is imperative in todays Information Technology climate.
Lets look at the risks you need to start assessing.
What is Data Backup and Disaster Recovery?
Data backup and disaster recovery are complementary components of modern business continuity strategy. Data backup is the systematic preservation of critical information, guaranteeing its secure storage. Disaster recovery is a framework and set of protocols designed to swiftly restore operations in the event of an unexpected crisis.
Start with a Risk Assessment
The first thing you will want to do is assess the risks related to securing the data for your business and clients to ensure business continuity.
Depending on the services you provide, annual risk assessments may be required. There can also be compliance requirements, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI) or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Ensure you are utilizing HIPAA Compliant Cloud Hosting or PCI Compliant Hosting, respectively.
How is Data Classified?
You will need to know and understand how your site or application gathers data. It is also vital to know the classification of it as well. This will determine the storage and security of data as you assess risk.
Some common data classifications are Public, Private, and Restricted data."
Information that is available to and from the public may not need retention. If it does, the risk of compromise to that information would be low since it is public. In contrast, if private or restricted information were compromised, it would be catastrophic.
Who Owns the Data
Once you have determined the classification of the data, you will want to establish data ownership.
Does this data belong to your business, your client, or an outside individual or entity?
This is critical to determining what processes are necessary for accessing, storing, and securing the data. It is also good to have security access measures, such as Two-Factor Authentication, in place. After accomplishing this vital step, you can move on to access measures, storage, and security.
How is Data Stored and Secured
Data storage and security are factors in the assessment process to watch on a continual basis. This will include storage capacity as well as where in the setup specific data will be.
For instance, do you want the operating system and site content on the same drive array or not?
This can also dictate the type of drives (SATA or SSD) as well as the array implementation of them. Disk encryption is another thing to consider in the security piece of the assessment. As mentioned above, determine the access method for those that need it.
Create a Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan
Critical to any risk assessment plan is having a data backup or recovery plan. Businesses, large or small, see the impact of data loss due to a catastrophic event. Having a plan in place to get back up and running should something happen is vital to survival.
During this part of the risk assessment, a Business Impact Analysis can prove valuable. The BIA will outline the consequences of a disruption of business function and processes resulting from data loss. This analysis will also put into place a proper backup and disaster recovery plan.
Mission-Critical Systems and Infrastructure - Know What You Need
This is where an infrastructure assessment comes in handy. You will be putting all of the gained knowledge of your systems to use.
Because you know the classification of data, ownership, storage, and security, implementing a backup solution should not be difficult.
The other part of the equation would be the actual infrastructure itself. You will need to consider the configuration of your servers and how this setup will factor into your backup solution.
There are those that may have a single server setup. Your options are whether to back up the data on the server or to a remote location. For others, a multi-server setup will need evaluation for the best way to put backups in place. You will need to decide between backing each server up to its own server, drive, or to a single server or server cluster.
On-server backup storage, or local storage, simply means the backup and live data exist on the same server. This can either be on the same drive or another physical drive on the server. A configuration with on-server backups would have direct access to data, usually contained in the file system. This gives you some recourse should there be a need to restore a file or entire sets of data. But this would not provide the ability to recover data in the event of a full server failure.
By contrast, remote server backups provide a more sound disaster recovery option. The idea is that you are not only able to restore files and data sets but the entirety of the data contained on the server if necessary. Depending on the implementation, direct access to the backups may or may not be an option. Still, this can be one of the best tools to consider when backing up your data.
Why Planning for Data Backup and Recovery is Important
In creating the recovery plan, it is essential to consider the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and the Recovery Point Objective (RPO). The RTO is the measure of how long your business can be offline before the damages are catastrophic. What that time frame looks like business to business may vary.
Businesses that count on obtaining data and storing it in databases would suffer if that flow of data stopped for even one hour. Busy WooCommerce stores can lose money if potential customers are not able to reach their stores to buy products. A capable backup and recovery plan should account for the time it would take to get systems restored.
The RPO is the measure of how much data you can lose during a catastrophic event before your ability to do business or remain in business is in question. There is nothing worse than restoring your systems and finding there were not enough restore points to ensure the most recent changes were intact.
Or, as in the case example of the Orleans Parish Civil District Court, data loss can occur due to having a backup solution that was not tested after a system update. Your backup and recovery plan needs to include proper testing to ensure functioning backups are happening for your business.
Have a Team - Be Ready to Go
Whether your infrastructure is in-house or with a managed provider, it is essential to have a team willing to act at a moments notice. If you're in-house, ensuring your Backup and Recovery plan solves for your teams availability in crisis will prove valuable.
If you are hosting your systems via a managed provider, it is good to know what their data backup and recovery plans are. This is usually outlined in a Service and Organization Controls Report (SOC). This can be the difference between data loss, downtime for longer than desired, or quick recovery and loss avoidance.
Liquid Webs SOC 3 report and all other certifications are available on our site.
Backup and Disaster Recovery: Critical Features
On-Server Backups
On-server backups can be with or without the use of a control panel. This holds true for most server types, including VPS, Cloud Dedicated, and Dedicated Servers. Liquid Web fully managed servers use cPanel or Plesk for Linux and Plesk only for Windows environments.
Using a control panel and setting up on-server backups provides flexibility in the days and times they run, giving you many restore points. You will want to ensure that you have enough server storage to house both your data and backups.
Remote Backups
Remote backups have a different implementation for server cloud hosting than for traditional Dedicated servers. Liquid Webs cloud server backups are a part of our Cloud Platform. Each backup is for the full server and runs daily. These backups are stored on nodes within our data centers managed by us. Remote backup pricing varies between providers. At Liquid Web, we have two options for Cloud Backups: Pay Per Gig and Quota Pricing.
For traditional dedicated servers, Acronis Cyber Backup is the best solution for remote backups. You can choose to run daily or continuous backups of your server, only backing up changes to your files. The latter gives you a secluded, incremental backup solution for dedicated servers. In this case, Acronis Cyber Backup takes incremental backups of your entire server to ensure that you can restore or reimage your server in case of a disaster. The initial image taken is of the whole server with more images only updating changes that were made to files. All backups can be stored in Liquid Web data centers or in the Acronis Cloud.
Check With Your Host for Backup Services to Match Business Needs
If your setup is being done in-house, it can be a daunting task, but having the right staff can ease the pressure. Likewise, having a managed hosting provider can make data backup and recovery easy for you. Most providers have professionals that are able to walk you through the options they provide. Liquid Web has sales, support, dedicated system monitoring, and a recovery team available 24/7/365 to assist you with your data backup and disaster recovery needs.
