Backup & Disaster Recovery: Which Solution is Right for You?
Business continuity. You know you need it, but you’re not sure how to get there. This article will explore several of the leading backup and recovery solutions to help you identify the best option for your business. Before we get into specific products, however, let’s define a few of the parameters we will use in our evaluation:
· Recovery Time Objective, or RTO, is a target that establishes the maximum acceptable time you can allow for a backup solution to recover your data. How do you determine your RTO? Start by asking yourself, “How long can I afford to be down?” Your answer to this question may range anywhere from minutes to days.
· Recovery Point Objective, or RPO, is the maximum amount of data–measured in time–that is acceptable to lose. RPO is a function of backup frequency. The more often you backup your data, the smaller your RPO. Like RTOs, RPOs can vary from minutes to days, depending on your business needs.
· Virtualization describes the process of accessing backup data via a “virtual” server environment in the event that one’s primary server is inaccessible. Business continuity solutions virtualize from a local device, the cloud, or both.
RTO and RPO are the primary metrics you’ll want to keep in mind as you evaluate backup and recovery products. Now, let’s jump in.
Datto: Local & Cloud Backup with Disaster Recovery
Long a leader in backup and recovery, Datto offers onsite and cloud-based business continuity solutions. The company’s flagship product, Siris, is an on-prem appliance that backs up locally and to the cloud, with both local and cloud server virtualization. Best suited for organizations with an onsite data center, Siris takes hourly snapshots to provide some of the lowest RPOs of any business continuity solution on the market today. Combined with a local virtualization process that takes just a matter of minutes, Siris can get you up and running faster than nearly any other solution, and with minimal data loss.
But Siris isn’t Datto’s only solution:
· Datto Continuity is a secondary backup solution that takes a complete snapshot of a device’s local drive. This makes it especially attractive for users who commonly work outside of the network—i.e. executives that work off a laptop and travel frequently.
· Datto SaaS (Software as a Service) is one of the newer additions to the company’s award-winning line, offering fast, convenient recovery of emails, documents, and presentations stored via Microsoft 365 or the G-Suite.
Acronis: Cloud Backup with Disaster Recovery
Founded in 2003, Acronis offers robust backup capabilities at an attractive price point. Due to their cloud-only design, Acronis solutions offer shorter term contract commitments based on the number of virtual machines and TB of data stored. This makes Acronis especially attractive to organizations that may be considering a move to full-cloud, but aren’t there yet. As far as downtime goes, Acronis can get you back up and running with a 1-day RPO and RTO as low as four hours.
Synology: Local Network Attached Storage
Synology is one of the newer backup and recovery solutions to hit the market. Commonly referred to as a Network Attached Storage device, or NAS, Synology offers drive redundancy with rapid local recovery. In other words, Synology gives you local access to all your files while syncing to cloud storage systems, like SharePoint. Synology also plays well with local servers, making it a good solution for archived data and other files that aren’t accessed regularly.
In an increasingly digital marketplace, protecting your business data has become nothing short of mission critical. Experience true business continuity with one of Knight’s best-in-class backup and recovery solutions. Click here to learn more >