Could your company carry on doing business if your server failed and you were unable to recover your data? If your answer is that “It’s not going to happen!” because you know that you have got that one covered, then great. If on the other hand you have just felt a chill run down your spine at the very thought of your server failing, then don’t put it off any longer. If your data is that important to you, then for heaven’s sake do something about it.
Uninterruptible Power Supplies
If your server sits in your office, you should protect it using an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). A UPS does 2 jobs. Its primary job is to provide you with time to shut your machines down properly in the event of loss of power. It does this by providing you with power from its batteries. Servers don’t like losing power unexpectedly. It can cause corruption on the hard drive and in extreme cases can make it impossible to read data from it. The second job that a UPS will do for you is to smooth out the power and protect you against temporary power surges which could damage your server as well as momentary loss of power which could cause the system to shut down unnecessarily.
When looking at a UPS, there are two things that you need to know:
- The amount of power that you want to pass through it.
- The amount of time that you need protection for.
For most small businesses, you just need a few minutes as a grace period to allow you to shut your servers down safely.
When you buy a UPS, don't forget that you will need to replace the batteries every couple of years.
Online Backup
Most companies take some form of backup of their servers, but I am always surprised by the number of companies that still rely on tape and disk backup backup. It’s not that I dispute whether tape backups work or not. It’s rather that the only truly reliable solution for business continuity is to have offsite backup, and to automate that process rather than relying on the office manager remembering to insert the tape and take it home with them at night. The time when you will need that backup most is in the event that you are unlucky enough to suffer a fire or a flood, and the best way to ensure that you get access to your data after a fire is to use online backup. Admittedly, you need to have a high speed internet connection to use online backup reliably, but they are more widely available now. If you haven’t already made the investment in online backup, now is a good time to do so.
You can of course spend much more on business continuity than simply investing in online backup and provision of a decent UPS system, but this is sufficient for most small businesses. It’s a small price to pay for peace of mind that your business can recover as quickly as possible when bad things happen.
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