How good is your backup?

How good is your backup?

Is your backup going to save you or simply add to your problems – can you afford to assume it’s all working ok?

It was just a normal day in our office until I heard those fateful words “Do we have a backup of our Accounts data?”

Even though I knew that we had a good backup regime with daily backups on-site and weekly backups off-site, and even though we had previously carried out a ‘dry-run’, there was still a feeling of apprehension – this was the real thing!

Fortunately all our plans came good and within 5 minutes our data had been restored and the day returned to normal.

It is events like these, and the occasional calls from customers in a similar situation, that serve to remind me not just of the importance of backups but also the importance of testing that they work prior to the real thing. Over the years we have had a number of customers who ‘assumed’ their backup was working only to find out, at the point when they were needed, that they were not.

Why not use this newsletter as a reminder to check your data is being backed up daily, taken off-site on a regular basis and can be restored within a few minutes if necessary? Remember, as some Masterbill systems (particularly MB³ and Masterbill Elite) use SQL databases, which mean the files are held ‘open’ ready for use, you will need to check that your backup software either supports open files or has the ability to ‘close’ the files, back them up and then re-open the files again.

If you need any further assistance please speak to your IT Manager who should be responsible for the policy and systems used for backing up your data.