fITness Challenge: Testing Backups

We’re in week two of our fITness challenge! If you missed last week’s challenge, you can catch up here.

Now that we have covered how to check your backups, we must focus on testing them.

There are many reasons you should test your backups, but most importantly it’s because this process helps you learn how to implement your recovery plan following a data loss. It assures you and your business that the essential data you’re backing up is accurately preserved and accessible. It also validates the efficiency and effectiveness of your business’s backup plans. As mentioned last week, it’s not just about making sure your backups are there – what’s more important is making sure that those backups are accurate, recoverable, and accessible.

By testing your backups, you can gauge many different things:

While testing your backups may seem like a daunting task, it’s really a matter of answering five questions: What should you test? How often should you test? Can you restore the data? Is the recovery accurate and accessible? And, are the recoveries consistent with the originals?

Creating a documented backup testing plan will also help this process be easier and faster, especially for future tests. Make sure that you are testing your backups on a routine basis. The easiest way to do this is by testing the backups once they’re complete. If you followed our advice from last week, your backups are automatically scheduled, and you can make testing them a part of that.

Reevaluate the steps you took to restore and the quality of the data, and continually look for ways to improve the way you store/test that data. There is a saying…” You’re only as good as your last backup.” Make sure yours is superb.