Absolute Best Practices for Windows Server Backup

Backing up your business server is not only something that you should learn how to do, but something that you’ll want to learn to do efficiently in order to save yourself time, energy, and maybe even a little frustration. The best backup software the technological world has to offer won’t do you very much good if you aren’t using it to its full potential. So what are some things that you can do to have a more efficient NovaBACKUP virtual backup solution for your server?

1. Up in the Clouds

When backing up your server, you’ll also want to make sure that your cloud storage is included on your backup. It makes no difference if your cloud is an off-site location, an on-site server room, public cloud-based storage, or a hosted data center--you need to make sure you have it backed up. The main goal with this idea is to have all of your backups in a safe location so that you‘ll have access to them when necessary.

2. Make it Fast and Simple

While the actual creation of the virtual backup is something that you’ll most definitely want to focus on, you also want to pay especially close attention to the actual recovery process of the backup. You might have maintenance windows to think about, but you have to remember that should you ever require your backups you’ll most likely need them immediately. Try to arrange things so that you can get your entire Windows server up and running in a matter of minutes as opposed to a matter of hours. Every second counts when it comes to business.

In order to speed up the recovery process, focus on contemporary disk-to-disk solutions that have the ability to stream data from swifter online storage directly to your servers.

3. Recover While You Work

During the recovery process, it’s best that employees are still able to work while the server recovery is in progress. Unfortunately, the IT department often has to take out the time necessary to find the latest backup and load on the last differential while everyone else twiddles their thumbs in anticipation and frustration.

With the right tools it’s possible that the correct disk blocks can be detected that need to handle user requests. Those individual blocks should be restored first so that users have full access while the recovery is in progress. A full restore will take a little longer, but at least productivity won’t be suffering in the meantime.

4. Error Elimination

Sometimes a full restore can’t be completed because of a CRC (cyclic redundancy check) error or bad tape. Even though IT professionals are supposed to practice their recoveries from time to time in order to eliminate such errors, they can still happen if a file is open during a backup.

One way to eliminate such errors is to make sure that the virtual backups have been verified, that they include everything, and that they actually work the way they’re supposed to. It’s also a good idea to make sure that all of this is continuously happening and that you run tests that can verify the backup data and that the backup solution can check itself for corrupt files.

Even though NovaBACKUP's backups can be automated, you’ll still want to do everything that you can to make sure that you can get back to business as quickly and efficiently as possible should something ever happen to your server. Let us know if you’re ever in need of more tips for a more efficient server backup solution.