For people not in the know, IT appears laced with complex and complicated jargon and terminology. For those in the know, many terms take on different meanings, depending on the context and the service provider. As a small to medium-sized business (SMB) owner, you’ll be familiar with backup, disaster recovery and business continuity. You’ll also be aware that the terms are used interchangeably by IT engineers and specialists, leading to confusion and potential misunderstanding. You can develop a better understanding of the terms means by examining a brief description of each.
Backup
In the IT world, backup can be described as copying physical or virtual data, such as files, databases and programs from the primary site to a second location. Businesses backup vulnerable data to avoid downtime resulting from unforeseen events such as buggy software, human error, data corruption, or malicious hacking. A backup should capture and synchronise a snapshot of data or files. Should an unwanted event occur, data can be restored to the point in time the backup was made. An effective Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is underpinned by regular and thorough backup processes.
IT backup does not include physical machines such as computers, devices or systems. For example, if a laptop has a disk crash, the device would need replacement and configuration before having backed up data installed. Similarly, when a server or network goes down due to physical layer problems, hardware will need to be repaired or replaced before loading any historical backed up data.
Disaster Recovery
You realise that without rigorous backup, your DR plan is destined to fail. But backups are only one component of comprehensive DR. Disaster Recovery means a full recovery of your businesses’ physical and virtual systems, data, files and applications. DR is put into action when your IT infrastructure is jeopardised by events such as fires, floods, theft or cybercrime.
You need a robust DR plan in place to ensure that, if the unexpected happens, your business is subject to minimal downtime and data loss. With this in mind, a DR plan uses pre-defined parameters to pinpoint a satisfactory recovery period. From there, the best recovery point is selected to restore your systems and get your SMB back to work.
Business Continuity
Backup and DR mean that an SMB can recover its IT infrastructure within an acceptable timeframe. However, following a disaster, your systems may be down for hours or even days. A practical Business Continuity (BC) plan means that your employees can continue access data and necessary technology whatever the circumstances. If the BC plan implies zero downtime following a disaster, all the better.
Your critical business data should be backed up with configurable snapshots. The snapshots are then immediately virtualised to ensure BC. Virtual backup of data and files means that restore can take place within seconds. Bare-metal or hard disk restores can be applied to hardware together with cloud replication, meaning your systems will virtualised there and then.
Considering the features that many SMBs include in their BC plan will provide you with good insight. Often superfluous systems and data storage are not located on-site. A good BC plan also stipulates procedures for employees who work remotely. Wise businesses may have printed contact lists, email addresses, financial data and confidential staff data stored at an off-site location. This may sound old-school but it does mean that the wheels of business keep turning should data become electronically inaccessible.
Summary
In short, you now know the definitive differences between backup, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity. There are similarities, too. DR is reliant on backup and a solid BC plan is redundant if DR processes are inadequate. As an SMB owner, your best DR and BC solutions will depend on your unique IT infrastructure, your budget and how close to zero downtime you want to get.
