How to Select a Standout Data Backup Partner
When you’re looking for a data backup partner, go beyond basic archiving. Seek out a company that will look out for you and provide a quick data recovery in the event of a business interruption.
Data backups and secure cataloging and archiving of your media are mission-critical, but they’re just the beginning of a comprehensive data management program. The ability to provide advanced disaster-recovery preparedness, as well as other critical services, separates a merely good backup partner from a great one.
What else might a backup partner accomplish for your business? Media relocation management, environmentally sound media destruction and inventory audits are just a few possibilities.
Fast Disaster Recovery
When disaster strikes, it’s crucial to seamlessly recover your data and get your business up and running again as soon as possible, no matter the depth of the calamity. If your backup partner offers disaster recovery support services, you’ll have a lifeline when you need one most.
Here’s what to look for:
- Rapid response. A geographically diverse response team that won’t be so affected by a single disaster that it can’t devote full attention to your company.
- Location, location, location. Strategically located tape-vaulting facilities, readily accessible from major commercial centers but far from high-risk areas like flood plains and fault zones.
- A ready fleet. Look for secure transport vehicles or charter aircraft, and experienced staff on call to help you.
Ease Relocation Pain
Moving your company’s data to a new location can be stressful; it’s a chore with lots of moving parts. A provider that offers end-to-end management and relocation for your backups and archives offsite (and without using your IT staff) can ease anxiety and cut costs. Let your chosen partner handle all of the tasks associated with relocating your media—inventory, packing, secure transport, and setup at your new location.
A trusted partner also will audit the process every step of the way, providing status updates at important milestones; doing this ensures maximum data protection and minimal downtime.
Insist on Green Media Reuse
Even the most conscientious business can’t save everything. An end-of-life schedule for your older media is part of a responsible data backup and archiving strategy. Your backup partner should also permanently destroy unneeded media by turning it into reusable energy in an environmentally friendly manner.
Seek out services from a facility that offers a waste-to-energy destruction process, known traditionally as incineration. The incineration process produces energy for reuse. Additionally, your chosen partner will need to monitor the data you release for this process, right up until the point at which the information is rendered unreadable.
Will a Partner Offer Audit Support?
If your company gets hit with a litigation request or a government audit, you’ll be forced to comb through your archives looking for crucial data. It’s much easier if you conduct audits yourself, before an urgent situation arises, with a knowledgeable partner that offers media inventory-auditing services.
With a standout partner and these protections in place, you’ll go from good backup services to great ones very quickly.
The Secret of a Great Partnership: More for Less
To really grow a business, you need to do more than simply satisfy customer expectations; you need to deliver better service at lower cost. You know this from your own workplace.
When shopping for a data backup and recovery partner, ask these questions:
- “Sure, my data is stored securely and available in an emergency, but can—and will—you get us up and running quickly every time?”
- “Your firm can store all of our backup media; can you also move those records from my existing backup location?”
- “We can archive my backup media securely, but can you ensure the integrity of our backup materials?”
In a competitive business landscape, “good enough” answers to these questions are simply not enough. Search out a partner that meets and potentially exceeds your current data management standards.
Iron Mountain Suggests: Peace of Mind, including BackupCare™
You’ll rest easier when you engage Iron Mountain to vault records, build a disaster recovery program and provide its unique BackupCare tape-swapping services. Here’s why:
- An extra level of preparedness. Storing backup tapes at a geographically discrete offsite location greatly enhances your ability to recover from a regional disaster.
- Everything in its right place. Media are housed in a secure, protected storage facility and handled, transported and stored following environmental standards based on manufacturers’ recommendations.
- Unmatched tracking abilities. Iron Mountain’s tape-by-tape, file-by-file tracking and auditing services provide for most any scenario. For example, the InControl® solution scans tapes at key transition points. Disaster recovery pick (DRP) codes let you arrange in advance which backup tapes you’ll need for disaster recovery—and in what order you need to receive them. And when your scheduling is done through Iron Mountain SecureSync®, you’ll get a unified view of your remote-site backups.
- On call when it matters most. If disaster strikes, expect data restoration as quickly as you need it, as per emergency provisions in your Service Level Agreement (SLA). Your media returns in the same condition it was in when you sent it offsite.
- Always on the case. The SecureSync® Web interface will help you monitor, manage, search, locate and retrieve your data anytime, anyplace—you enjoy complete visibility and control. And 24/7 access frees you from the constraints of dealing with a problem during normal business hours.
- You’re secured. With all these services in place, you’ll spend less time defending disaster recovery procedures to internal and external auditors.
The three key benefits of BackupCare™ services. When you opt for Iron Mountain’s tape-swapping service, you’re tackling those aforementioned crunches—personnel, cost and emergencies—head on. By having trained professionals handle your tape management processes, you’re freeing your staff to conduct its core business—and that makes optimal use of your payroll dollars.
Do you have questions about data backup and recovery? Read additional Knowledge Center stories on this subject, or contact Iron Mountain’s Data Backup & Recovery services team. You’ll be connected with a knowledgeable product and services specialist who can address your specific challenges.
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