Quick Easy Way To Test Your Backups

Test Your Backups

It’s essential to make regular backups of your business computer and file systems, but it’s equally important to test these backups. You don’t want to know that your backup files or images are corrupt and therefore useless when attempting to recover from a cyber-attack or natural disaster.

Read on to learn about the hassle-free way to test your backups will help you avoid such disasters.

Understand Why Testing Your Backup Is Necessary And Crucial

Suppose you cannot restore the files from a backup after a system failure or other kind of disaster. In that case, there is a very high risk that your organization will one day face a financial or business disaster, including criminal prosecution and fines.

Backup makes sure that critical data is stored accurately and permanently. If the backup test fails, you can resolve the issue before data is permanently lost. Backup testing also confirms the efficiency of your company’s backup schedules and policies.

Form A Documented Backup Plan

A documented test plan makes sure that employees have the rules and instructions required for proper data recovery. This documentation ensures that crucial files are easily accessible and completely intact when primary storage systems fail. The plan should define who is responsible for testing the backup and how often the tests will run.

Make Test Backup A Routine Task

Regular data recovery testing is essential to ensure backup integrity and validity. Do not assume that lack of error messages shows that backups are working correctly.

Test your backups with a complete restoration procedure weekly or monthly, or more often when you have important information, to ensure that a software or hardware problem isn’t affecting your backup’s success.

Regular and extensive backup testing is required to identify anomalies to initiate rectification procedures.

Test Your Entire Backup

Each business has to understand its backup requirements and data layout. A strategy of backup testing that performs well for one business may be entirely inadequate for another. Each organization has varying backup goals.

For example, companies in the banking sector require proper backup to meet their legal, audit, and compliance obligations. At the same time, healthcare organizations are accountable for safeguarding patient data, so they need to pay attention to retention, security, and compliance with various legal needs.

Decide what your backup requirements are and start planning from there. For all restoration and recovery tests to be completed, they must include data, applications, and system integrity tests.

Test Often In Sync With Your Regular Schedule

Ideally, you must conduct the test after each backup to ensure that data can be viewed and restored correctly. However, this program is often not practical in the real sense because of time constraints and the unavailability of resources.

The basic principle is to commit to a weekly or monthly schedule for individual systems, software, and files through audits to ensure that the data is correct and available as planned.

This approach also provides the company with practical plans for recovering from a storage system disaster or failure. It’s also crucial to keep in mind that not every piece of data is formulated equally. It’s a fact that affects how often backup tests are run. Some data might be essential than others.

For example, you may consider government or industry-enforced compliance information more essential than marketing information. You should plan to identify the kind of backups you should test most often.

Use The Automation Power

Automation plays a vital role in any strategy of backup testing. Companies should endeavor to automate backup testing as much as they can to ensure data validity and consistency, minimizing the workload of the backup test team.

Automating the whole backup and testing procedure saves effort and time and allows team members to concentrate on functions that demand their high-level experience.

Make Sure The Backup Test Covers All Access Points

If the backup test does not validate the whole workload to be recovered, it cannot be considered an actual test. It’s an enticing destination to simply pull many files out of a random file and announce success.

Effectively test by restoring entire files across applications, virtual machines, and databases. Make test backups a central part of in-house application deployment and development. You should not make backup testing an afterthought.

You should consider testing when new applications are developed and introduced into an organization. One of the most successful strategies for managing enterprise data is knowing when and how to run backup tests before the data is migrated to production.

Make Sure The Backup Is Correct

Whenever you restore data, database and storage administrators should carry out a health check to ensure that the restored files are free from omissions and abnormalities. However, a hasty examination may not be enough.

Data that seems correct to a computer professional can have subtle flaws that only a skilled eye can spot. End-users of specific business applications are mainly the best-positioned individuals to identify if the returned dataset is consistent and correct.

Create Unnecessary Backups

Generally, cloud backup services are difficult to corrupt. However, you may opt to have at least two services in case any provider is not available. Also, if a quick and complete recovery is needed, corruption on the cloud provider side or a test shows some missing data.

In the data server, never back up to a single tape or set of tapes. Archive multiple backup files and carry out a test on them before you store tapes in different locations. Change the cartridges each year, or after a couple of years, or more often if you notice wear or damage. The same is true when hard disks are used for backup.

Check With The Backup IT Company

Copy your data into a different computer or computer location. Then, delete the initial data that the IT firm is supposed to backup for you. Wait for 2-3 weeks, and then call the IT firm and request for restoration. If the IT firm fails to restore the data, you can ensure your data backup is at risk.

Final Thoughts

The importance of scheduling regular backups of data to avoid the failure of the primary storage system is prevalent. Less popular, however, is the truth that even backups can fail, blocking access to critical data and wreaking havoc on IT and business operations. Use the steps above to test your backups quickly and confirm that your IT department or firm has your data backup intact.

Colorado Computer Support boasts of an adept team of IT professionals. Despite the size of your company, we are your go-to agency for cutting-edge IT support services and solutions.

Seeking to know how we can help your business keep up with the emerging technologies? Don’t hesitate to contact us today.