Tape Backups: You Can’t Afford Not To

When Disaster Strikes

At some point in all of our lives, we come face to face with the realization that computer systems that we use every day will fail at the worst possible time … and the data that you no longer have access to is the data that you need desperately.

You may be a law firm administrator at a medium sized firm in Rockville, Maryland and find your complete system is down just when the monthly billing was almost complete.  Or maybe you’re an attorney at a Washington, DC law firm who just found that the file with the latest copy of the pleading you spent all day finishing has been over written by someone at your firm.   What happens next depends on the type of data backup system your firm is using and how well the backups have been made.

What Are Your Data Backup Options?

Most firms use some type of daily tape backup system.  Recovery from a system failure where hundreds of megabytes of data have been lost takes a full day, or even two days, to repair the server and/or replace the defective storage devices and to restore the programs, files, and setups.

Full recovery of the data is usually not possible because files that have been added and updated since the last data backup will be lost.   Other files may be lost if a user did not close an application when they left for the day.  In this case, the application that is still open marks the file “in use” and will not be backed up.  Even more serious is when the data on the backup tape is not useable because of errors during the backup.   This may be due to a tape error which caused the backup program to fail.  In this case, backups on successive days are usually unsuccessful until the tape backup program is restarted.   The failure of the tape backup program can also occur when there are problems in the Exchange data base or in the file system Active Directory.

Is Your Data Backup Program Even Working?

Industry statistics indicate that 34% of all companies do not check their backup reports and 77% of all backups have failures.  It is essential that the data backup must be checked each and every morning and any errors or problems must be immediately corrected.  Design One also recommends that a check should be made monthly where one or more files are restored from the tape backup to assure that all is in good working order.

In addition to server and system failures there is a 30% chance that you will have a corrupted word processing, data, or other file.  We have all heard about a company that had a disastrous failure of their server or that a power failure corrupted some of their files. Often, these errors are in client or billing records or documents that we don’t use every day and it may not be discovered for several days or weeks or more that the data is no longer usable – what a nightmare!

So it is important to have a tape rotation scheme to provide recovery of individual data files.  Design One has designed a 10 to 12 tape rotation scheme and a different tape is used for each daily backup. These tapes are preserved for one month or even several months without the need for an excessive number of tapes.   This allows for the recovery of a corrupted word processing, data, or other file in case of any errors.

Some firms find it a burden to maintain a tape rotation scheme.  Remote or Internet backup is an excellent solution that provides the prompt recovery of individual files without the burden of maintaining a number of tapes.  However, one problem with Internet backups is that only 30 days of backups are typically preserved.

Some firms choose to implement a hybrid disk and tape backup system.  The disk is used to take one or more snap shots of the system files.  Then, these are copied to tape.   This is useful for both shortening the time the system is unavailable during the backup and to provide multiple data backups during the day.

Most importantly, your firm must not use disk or Internet backup as its only data backup system, because disk and Internet backups are not effective for recovery from loss of a server, with several hundred gigabytes of data.  Internet transfer rates are typically 100 times slower than tape transfer – even when a T1 or faster Internet connection is used. Furthermore, the volume of data to be restored is also usually too large to be transferred over the Internet within a reasonable period of time.

A Comprehensive Data Backup Plan for a Washington, DC Law Firm

A few medium sized firms have had the foresight to implement a complete Disaster Recovery System where files are continuously backed up by being copied to a standby server located at their office or over the Internet to a standby server at another location.   In this case, the switch over settings to the standby server can be made within one or two hours and everyone can continue their work with virtually no loss of data.

In cases where the standby server is located at Design One, such as our Washington DC law firm client Shapiro, Lifschitz and Schram, attorneys and staff can continue their work from home or other locations with Internet access even when a disaster has destroyed their entire office.

As complete as a Disaster Recovery System seems to be, individual backups using tape and/or Internet backup (where separate copies of each day’s files are created) must also be performed… so that when you find out that the latest copy of the file you spent all day finishing has been overwritten by someone at your firm, you can quickly and easily recover your work.