Backup and disaster recovery

The 3-2-1 principle

Three copies of your data, on two different types of storage, one of which is off site. That is not theory: it is the reason a ransomware attack is an annoying day for one company and the end of the business for another.

What we back up

• Servers, as a full image with ShadowProtect, so an entire machine can be restored.
• Workplaces, for companies where people keep files locally.
• Microsoft 365: mail, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams. Microsoft does not do this for you.
• Industry applications and databases, with attention to consistent snapshots.

What we work with

For image backups of servers and workplaces we use ShadowProtect by Arcserve. That lets us restore not just individual files but a complete machine, if needed onto different hardware or as a virtual machine. For Microsoft 365 we use a separate backup solution, because that data sits outside your own environment.

We test the restore

This is where we differ from many providers. We periodically restore data into a test environment and check that it is usable. A green tick in a backup console says nothing about whether your administration will still be there.

How long may it take, and how much may you lose

Two questions that decide the whole design. How many hours can your business be down before it really hurts, and how many hours of work may be lost? For an accountancy firm a day back may be acceptable; for a transport company it is not.

Disaster recovery

In case of fire, water damage or theft, a file backup is not enough. We make sure there is a plan for continuing on other hardware or in the cloud, including the order in which systems come back.