World Backup Day
In a world where fake news is spreading misinformation, it can be hard to tell what is real and what is not. World Backup Day is real (amongst us IT Support and IT Service people) and it slowly making it into mainstream knowledge.
In the IT world, some rules are always changing. It’s good to remember, however, that some rules are timeless because they still make a lot of sense! The 3-2-1 backup rule is a great example.
As simple as 3, 2, 1
The 3-2-1 backup rule can help you overcome nearly any failure scenario if you follow it.
The 3-2-1 backup rule implies that you should:
Have at least 3 copies of your data
Keep these backups on 2 different media
Store 1 backup offsite
Despite the 3-2-1 backup rule’s simplicity, many people continue to ignore it and lose their data because they were unprepared for a disaster. Many lessons were learned after disasters such as 9/11 – some companies from the World Trade Center stored their offsite backups in the SAME OFFICE buildings and lost all of their company data in a few short hours. More recently, malware and ransomware have been infecting businesses. With a correctly set up and maintained backup solution, you can limit the business losses if you do get infected. There is no need to have your data held to ransom.
Following the 3-2-1 backup rule is easy!
Here’s how it works:
Have at least 3 copies of your data
By three copies, I mean your original data and two backups. It’s obvious that the more copies of the data you make, the less risk you have of losing everything.
One backup is good, just not good enough. If you have only one additional copy of your data, at least make sure it’s located in a different physical location from the original (and as far away as possible!)
Keep these backups on 2 different media
Having several backups of your data and keeping them in the same place is not logical. Why? Because a common failure will affect all devices. For example, disks from the same storage device (NAS, Server, etc) are statistically dependent, and often, after one disk failure, you might experience the failure of another disk from the same storage in a short period (often because the devices were bought approximately at the same time and from the same vendor).
The 3-2-1 backup rule urges you to keep backups on a wide range of different mediums: tapes (old technology, high storage), USB drives (new technology, medium size storage), CDs (small storage limitation), external and internal hard drives (fast, practically endless storage), etc.
Store 1 backup offsite
Offsite means as far away as possible, in another city, county, country or even continent. Your data is safe then, even if there is a fire or national disaster.
Is there any technology lock-in?
That’s where the 3-2-1 rule really shines. There is incredible versatility in how you can build a great backup solution. For instance, backups on USB drives are one way to get data off-site and on different media. Most NAS (Network Attached Storage) device offer a replication service, this would require a second NAS device. For the modern era, even putting backups in a service provider cloud is a way to address the off-site requirement easily. In any situation, the 3-2-1 rule can be used to meet any backup and availability requirements for your business.
How do you follow the 3-2-1 backup rule?
There are lots of ways! For instance, you can just set up a reminder on your calendar and then copy your data manually according to the 3-2-1 rule. There are a number of easy-to-use applications, which will automatically create your backups and also follow the 3-2-1 backup rule by storing them in specified offsite locations.
With cloud services being highly available now, you can fully automate your backup strategy. Trying to maintain a backup manually will eventually lead to missing a backup, forgetting to run the backup and then having your data at risk as it has not been backed up completely.