Do you have a backup?…No seriously, where is your backup?
It may seem obvious to industry veterans, but RAID isn’t a backup solution, it’s just a collection of similar disks to create as many logical volumes as possible on a single drive, often with some redundancy. Levels are included.
It is not fail-safe, hard drives like all electronic devices can fail occasionally. In these instances the array usually rebuilds itself using the spare disk, however, this may fail in rare circumstances. If a read error occurs during a rebuild, the RAID may crash, causing data loss. This is why all providers, including themselves, insist on a systematic backup solution to prevent data loss. With the GDPR now in full swing, data protection is as important as ever.
It’s useful to understand a few key points about RAID, even when deployed on expensive enterprise-grade SANs (storage area networks).
- It doesn’t protect against user error (deletion or erroneous editing of files)
- It can fail (however unlikely), even when adequately designed and implemented
- It doesn’t protect against corruption
- It doesn’t protect against Malware or Ransomware
- It doesn’t protect against total-site outage or loss
At Fusionhost, we pride ourselves on the enterprise-grade SSD storage environment we’ve built, which in most cases requires at least several simultaneous drive failures (highly unlikely). That said, it needs to be appreciated that it has its limits, and every diligent business should try to make sure it has a backup plan or put itself at risk.
We recommend a 3-step backup system.
- Fusionhost Snapshots.
- Fusionhost NAS.
- Offsite backup.
Fusionhost Snapshots – Baked at the heart of Fusionhos is an understanding that our customers expect an enterprise-grade solution, which is why our automated snapshot storage takes your servers away from the infrastructure used to host them. Can fully and automatically back up to a redundant storage environment. This allows for hardware redundancy and the ability to restore quickly and easily. Be sure to enable them on the schedule you want, but be aware that snapshots don’t protect against certain risks like file deletion, they only capture a picture of Server as it was taken.
Fusionhost NAS – Secondly, we would recommend duplicating important files or backing up databases to your NAS (Network Attached Storage). This is different from a snapshot. If the snapshot fails due to OS-level corruption (more common in Windows VMs than Linux) and is unable to restore, you will still be able to create a new server and restore it. Will be able to reconnect. Your important data/files for easy recovery as a last resort. Of note, this type of network backup is vulnerable to malware/ransomware, as it connects directly to the server during operation, so plan with this in mind.
Offsite Backups – A total site failure is incredibly unlikely, given that we host all of our environments in Tier 4 data centers with multiple network levels and power redundancy, however, it is possible. In these cases, it’s wise to make sure you have somewhere you can restore from, for which we’d recommend R1Soft. It’s a continuous data protection (CDP) suite that takes incremental backups at scheduled intervals, combined with resources in another data center away from your main servers, to provide multi-site redundancy to your environment. which Fusionhost can arrange on your behalf.
Using the above system you will have a solution to recover from hardware failure, data loss, total site failure, and malware/ransomware attacks with minimal damage. You get 50GB of free snapshot storage with every flexible resource, and upgrades are very cost-effective, so take advantage!
As set forth in our Terms of Service, it is the Customer’s responsibility to ensure adequate backup plans are in place to protect themselves against loss of business, if not we are happy to create a backup system. We’ll help you – just get in touch.
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