Despite the best of intentions, those IT guys that are responsible for backing up the servers sometimes get it wrong. Now, we are not here to bash on the IT guys, after all, everybody from all realms of the business world are subject to the occasional goof. Performing regular backups is critical to any company’s well-being. But sometimes even the seasoned pro can make a mistake. Here are a couple of mistakes to avoid when backing up servers.

Every once in awhile, you need to have your backups tested. However, testing your backups seems to be one of those duties that falls to the wayside. That is, it gets put on the back burner and eventually forgotten. Forgotten, that is, until something goes wrong and exposes the mistake. Test those backups and make sure they are properly functioning when you need them.

There are many companies that send backup tapes offsite way too early. Some even ship them out first thing each morning. If you have a system failure and your backup tapes are at another location, your downtime will be as long as it takes to get the tapes back to location. Our advice, keep your backup tapes on site for at least 24 hours.

There are companies that feel just backing up data is good enough. That is, all they backup is data and not all the other software. This is not good practice. If there is a system crash, it takes much longer to manually reload software as opposed to having everything on backup where full recovery can be made in one step.

We do hope this was useful information. At ServerWorlds, our inventory consists of IBM system storage, HP server parts, refurbished Dell servers and much more. Check us out today.