Introduction
Having a solid backup strategy is crucial for any small business to protect its data and ensure business continuity. As the sole IT person for a small company, it is my responsibility to develop and implement a backup plan that fits our specific needs and budget. In this article, I will walk through the key factors I considered when building a backup strategy for my small business network.
Assessing the Business’s Backup Needs
The first step is identifying what exactly needs to be backed up. This will determine the backup plan requirements.
For my small business, the key data that needs protection includes:
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Client files and projects – As a creative agency, our client deliverables and works in progress represent our core business assets. Losing these files could be catastrophic.
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Company documents – Things like contracts, financial statements, HR paperwork should all be backed up.
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Email – Email contains important communications and documents from both employees and clients.
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Databases – We utilize databases for several line of business applications that are critical to operations.
With the key backup targets identified, I can now outline the ideal backup scenario:
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Recovery point objective – Daily backups to prevent substantial data loss.
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Recovery time objective – Ability to restore core systems within 24 hours.
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Retention – 30 days of snapshot history for files. 1 year retention for email and databases.
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Security – Encryption to protect backed up data. Access controls to prevent unauthorized restoration.
Using these objectives, I can shape the rest of my backup strategy.
Choosing Backup Storage Media
An important decision is choosing the right media to store backup data on. Key options to consider include:
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External hard drives – Low cost but risk of failure and physical damage/theft. Requires manual rotations.
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NAS devices – Network attached storage provides consolidated storage and redundancy. Can automate backups.
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Cloud storage – Offsite and easily scalable. Security and bandwidth costs are considerations.
For my small business, I opted for a hybrid solution using local NAS storage and a cloud backup service:
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On-prem NAS – Provides quickly accessible backups for most critical data like files and databases.
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Cloud storage – For offsite storage of email and redundancy for key file backups.
This hybrid approach gives me both performance and an offsite contingency.
Selecting Backup Software
Choosing the right backup software is key to automating the process. I researched both Windows Server Backup and third party options like Veeam Availability Suite.
In the end I selected Veeam as it provided important advantages:
- Application aware image backups for our critical databases.
- Built in compression and deduplication to optimize storage usage.
- Reporting and monitoring of all backups across on prem and cloud targets.
Their licensing model fit nicely within my small business budget as well.
Configuring Backup Jobs
With our software selected, I could now configure the actual backup jobs and policies. Some key elements of our configuration include:
File and Folder Backups
- Full daily backup to on-prem NAS of our main file shares and client project data.
- Incremental backup to cloud storage for redundancy and offsite storage.
Email Backup
- Utilizing Exchange native backup via Veeam to backup our on-prem Exchange server.
- Backups stored on cloud repository with 1 year retention.
Database Backups
- Transaction log backups every 2 hours to capture changes.
- Full database backup to NAS nightly.
- Monthly backup archives to cloud for long term retention.
Verifying Reliability
The final and critical step is verifying that all backup jobs are succeeding reliably. This involves:
- Checking job status and reports for any errors.
- Performing test restores from backup to validate recoverability.
- Retaining backup logs and reports to identify any issues.
I set aside time monthly to perform test restores and audit our backups to surface any potential gaps.
Conclusion
Implementing a solid backup solution requires assessing business needs, selecting appropriate media, software, and configuring policies tailored to your objectives. With our hybrid NAS and cloud-based strategy using Veeam, I have confidence I can efficiently backup and recover critical systems for my small business. Maintaining the backup jobs and performing regular verifications are crucial to ensuring overall reliability. A little planning goes a long way to protecting your company’s data assets.
