Do these words sound familiar to you?
As a consultant working with a variety of clients, I've heard these words almost as a mantra. When discussing data backup, the conversation almost always includes these words...
I recently received a phone call that sent chills down my spine.
It started with the words "Heath, Last night BEFORE our backup ran, we had a system failure".
Discussions about customer backup typically go something like this:
Q: So, do you store your backups off-site?
A: Yes, we take a tape off site every night.
Q: So, what will happen if you building catches on fire during the day, or you have a hardware failure during the day before your backup?
A: Well, we'd ONLY have the recreate ONE day of business.
OUCH........
The whole point of this post is this:
Hopefully you have a plan for what you would do if your building burned and you lost all ON-SITE backups and equipment.
If you don't, you really should finish that yesterday... without that plan, you WILL MOST LIKELY NOT REOPEN YOUR BUSINESS.
Most people know this and have a plan at least thought out.
However, what about a plan to recover from a ONE DAY data loss?
Let's say the building didn't burn, but your server died before your backup and after you had been working all day.
Do you know how you would figure out what items you sold, shipped, billed, cut POs for, adjusted inventory on, etc?
We all give a log of focus to a total disaster recovery, but somehow a single day recovery gets overlooked.
In all businesses I know, NO ONE IS REALLY WILLING TO LOSE EVEN A SINGLE DAY OF TRANSACTIONS.
Somehow, the data will have to be recreated.
Do yourself a favor: Consider WHAT you would need to do AND HOW you would accomplish the task.
You don't want to try and figure these things out AFTER you've had an incident.
Trust me, you'll have enough going on... don't delay planning.
Happy e-commerce...
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