The cloud has completely altered how many modern companies conduct business. While this technology is certainly great at distributing computing resources in an efficient manner, one of its more specific abilities is the manner in which it handles disaster recovery.
3-2-1 backup rule
When it comes to disaster recovery, there’s no tool more important than a solid backup routine. The data your firm creates and stores is vital to its success, and it’s very often irreplaceable. Therefore, most experts in the field recommend what’s been called the 3-2-1 backup rule. This is where an organization creates three copies of each piece of data it handles. It then stores this information in two distinct forms of media, with at least one being physically separated from the main office. Basically, you’re putting your eggs in as many baskets as possible without overdoing it. To understand how vital the 3-2-1 backup rule can be, let’s take a look at a case where it wasn’t implemented properly.
The year was 1998 and Pixar was working on Toy Story 2. All was going well when animated objects in the movie started disappearing, according to The Next Web’s former editor, Matthew Panzarino. Apparently, someone had run a command that deleted all the files related to the movie in Pixar’s database. When they finally got the situation under control, around 90 percent of the original no longer existed.
Pixar immediately attempted to switch over to their backup data that was kept on site. But, to their horror, they realized that backups hadn’t been functioning properly. All hope of restoring the movie was lost, until Supervising Technical Director Galyn Susman remembered that she’d been copying the movie on her personal computer so she could work at home. The film was eventually restored and went on to generate major success at the box office, but the lesson here is that relying on a single backup system is simply asking for trouble.
The reason that the cloud is so great here is that it allows you to fulfill two of the three backup requirements. A cloud-based data backup system would be a distinct storage medium, and the fact that your vendor is most likely far away from you means that your information is going to be physically separated. In fact, with the Afinety Cloud Platform, your applications and data are geographically replicated via AWS — the largest cloud platform in the world — for the ultimate in security and disaster recovery.
“Another major benefit of cloud-based disaster recovery is how affordable it is.”
High-quality protection at a low price
Another major benefit of cloud-based disaster recovery is how affordable it is. There was a time where only larger organizations had the money to afford a continuity solution, but those days are long gone. The main benefit of the cloud here is what TechTarget contributor Alex Barrett refers to as a “pay-for-use model.” Basically, you can scale up your firm’s needs as you grow, and scale them back as business slows. This mitigates the issue of older, on-site disaster recovery models, which forced you to purchase expensive hardware.
Clearly, the cloud can offer a lot to legal firms that want to ensure the security of their data. Company leaders who would like to make the jump to this incredible technology should contact an Afinety representative today.