Backup and recovery
A backup nobody has restored is a hypothesis
Backups are monitored on every plan, and the machines you tell us are critical get a real test restore every month.
Almost every business we assess has backups. A good number of them have backups that would not have worked. The job had been failing since a Windows update in the spring, or it was running perfectly on a machine that stopped being the important one two years ago, or it was backing up the files and not the database the files are useless without.
None of that shows up on a dashboard saying the backup ran. It only shows up when somebody tries to put the data back, and the worst possible moment to find out is the morning you need it.
So we restore them, monthly, and tell you either way
Watching a backup complete tells you a job finished. It tells you nothing about whether the result can be turned back into a working business. The only test that means anything is taking the backup and restoring it, and that's what happens every month on the machines you've told us are critical.
You get the result whichever way it goes. A month where the restore failed is more useful than a month where it worked, because it's a problem found on an ordinary Tuesday instead of during an emergency. Backup monitoring and that monthly testing are on every plan; the backup service itself is a per-machine add-on, applied to the machines that need it rather than charged across everything.
What's covered
- Backups monitored on every plan, with failures chased rather than logged
- A real test restore every month on machines you've marked critical
- The result reported to you whether it passed or failed
- Cloud backup through N-able Cove, as a per-machine add-on
- Servers, workstations and the databases behind your line-of-business software
- Recovery planning: what comes back first, and how long it takes
Backup monitoring and monthly restore testing on critical machines are on every plan. The cloud backup service itself is a per-machine add-on, listed on your service schedule.
Compare the three plans, or read what the monthly fee covers.
Questions we get asked
- How do you decide which machines are critical?
- You do, and we'll tell you what we'd pick. It's usually the server running the software the business can't operate without, rather than every desktop in the building.
- How long would it take to get us running again?
- It depends on what failed and how much data there is, which is exactly why it's worth establishing before anything goes wrong rather than during. The assessment covers it, and the answer gets written down.
- Does this protect us from ransomware?
- It's the part that means ransomware doesn't end the business. Protection and patching are what stop it arriving. A tested restore is what means you don't have to consider paying.
- We already back up to a hard drive in the office. Is that enough?
- It's better than nothing and it shares a building with the thing it's protecting you from. Fire, theft and ransomware all tend to take the backup drive along with the server. An off-site copy is what covers that.
Related
Start with the assessment
An hour on site, at no cost. You'll get a written summary of what you're running, what's out of date, and what we would deal with first.