For commercial website operators, having a disaster mitigation and recovery plan is not a nicety, it’s a necessity.
Whether it’s an earthquake in Los Angeles, an ice storm in Atlanta, or flooding in Chicago, you never know when a disaster might strike — and although we all know that we should have a plan to protect our assets, many of us don’t…
There are multiple services out there that can help you put a plan together, and the first step is to contact your hosting company to find out what security and weather safety protocols they put in place to protect their servers — and your network.
According to Red Apple Media CEO and co-founder Steven Daris, “disaster” doesn’t have to mean some kind of destructive natural catastrophe.
“Basements flood and electrical fires start from pets peeing on electrical equipment — there are so many ways that ‘disaster’ can strike our online businesses — and without a mitigation and recovery plan, your livelihood could go up in smoke,” Daris told XBIZ. “The big companies understand the value in keeping a second (and even third) set of data backups, in addition to having an official backup plan in place, in case their server blows up or their data center has an issue.”
There are a variety of ways in which vital business resources can be secured.
“Many online business owners feel confident keeping their data on an external hard drive, updated daily and locked up in a safe somewhere outside of their offices — while others depend on online storage systems to store their video and photo files out of physical harm’s way,” Daris explains. “But with so many regions commonly struck by intense weather events, including hurricanes, tornadoes and ice storms, there’s no one place that can keep your files safe.”
One solution to the problem of physical storage safety is to offload data to the cloud.
“In the event of a disaster, every second of downtime is a risk to your revenue, so it’s imperative to leverage cloud technology with multiple physical locations,” Daris added. “This eliminates downtime, data loss, [and] high recovery costs, and, most importantly, provides a pleasant peace of mind.”
Daris explains that protection of business assets such as video, accounting, email, and personal files is critical, but that fortunately, you’re not alone, and the onus is not on you to create your own disaster recovery plans.
“There are multiple services out there that can help you put a plan together, and the first step is to contact your hosting company to find out what security and weather safety protocols they put in place to protect their servers — and your network,” Daris advises, noting that “Cloud-based solutions are simply faster, more reliable, more cost-effective and are easier than ever to take advantage of — with many a la carte options available — without the requirement of a hosting contract.”
One such offering is Red Apple Media’s Media Vault service, which provides clients with a high-security protected data center featuring triple redundancy.
“If one circuit goes down, another immediately takes over, and a massive battery backup system provides power until a generator kicks in, which functions until power is restored,” Daris explains, adding that most data centers have fuel contracts that are on par with governments and hospitals. “This guarantees that the [data center] generator’s fuel supply is replenished with the same frequency as these official facilities.”
The message is clear: your data faces disaster, but protecting it is easier than ever.
