Data is the new currency, and in order to stay competitive businesses must protect it.
If an organization is to remain viable, it must provide constant access to the critical data and tools needed to stay productive.
At the same time, data size and volume are increasing at an unprecedented rate, spawning stricter IT regulations and greater downtime and disruption costs should disaster strike. Naturally, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are some of the hardest hit.
In short, outdated backup methods simply can’t keep up with today’s business requirements.
A leading solution is image-based backups. According to IT experts, it is the most innovative and reliable method of safeguarding your business by protecting the critical data on your servers.
Let’s learn more about image-based backups:
What Are Image-based backups?
While traditional solutions only capture data, image-based backup captures a virtual ‘picture’ of the entire workstation or server and stores it as a unique point in time.
If you need to rebuild or virtualize a machine due to damage or disaster, you can quickly restore all of the files, applications, operating systems, configurations, settings, and preferences.
This means that if a server goes down, you can restore it in minutes, rather than the hours or days it would take to requisition a new server and install and configure it from scratch.
Related:
Backups & Data Protection for SMBs in South Africa – What You Need To Know
Here are the Top 4 Benefits of Image-Based Backups for Your Small Business:
(1) Faster Recovery of Entire Systems or Individual Files
Downtime can cost thousands of rands every minute. In an outage or disaster, every second counts. The faster you can recover, the faster you can get back to taking care of customers and being productive.
Image-based backups allow you to recover individual files or entire workstations or servers in the exact state they were in at a specified point in time.
Whether you need to restore a single corrupted file or an entire office, image-based backup gives you the granularity and protection you need to avoid costly downtime consequences.
(2) Flexible Recovery Options – Even to Dissimilar Hardware
If a server is damaged or destroyed, you can’t afford to wait for an exact replica to ship from the other side of the country.
On the other hand, image-based backup will allow you to restore data, applications, and operating systems from the backup server to dissimilar hardware, i.e., to a new or repaired server of any make and model.
This option also allows you to repurpose and optimize existing infrastructure, and take advantage of the most direct path to recovery.
Related:
Backup or Business Continuity? Realising Modern Data Protection
(3) Remote Recovery – Saving Your Business Time and Money
If you have multiple office locations and you’re relying on traditional backup methods, you might be putting the entire organization at risk. Either you’re paying for IT staff to travel in order to perform maintenance and backups, or you’re relying on non-technical staff to perform tasks outside their capabilities.
Untrained staff may struggle to consistently perform reliable backups — and failed backups may even go unnoticed. Even if the backup process goes well, it’s likely that untrained staff won’t know how to restore after an outage. Additionally, failed or faulty backups can make bad situations worse by compounding downtime and data loss problems.
On the other hand, remote recovery via image-based backups enables IT admins to perform restorations from geographically dispersed backup servers to new or repaired hardware anywhere in the world.
(4) Easily Manage Remote Offices from A Central Location
Managing branch offices can be one of the biggest challenges an IT department faces. As mentioned above, it involves constant travel for admins, relying on untrained staff to perform technical tasks, or taking risks and living with the same frustrations and inefficiencies that come with having no IT team at all.
The ability to manage remote offices from a central location ensures that all of your branches can run as efficiently as your headquarters. With image-based backups, IT staff can maintain the same high standards of backup and recovery as they do for the main office.
Conclusion
Where older backup solutions leave an organization open to downtime, data loss, and IT inefficiencies, image-based backups protect the business and enable better business continuity – even for remote offices. In short, image-based backups mean a solid business case for modernizing your approach to business continuity.
Invest in Image-Based Backup Technology for Your Business
iSite Computers is a trusted provider of modern backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity solutions for SMBs in South Africa.
Established in 2008, we leverage image-based backups along with a full suite of managed IT services. We proactively protect, monitor, and manage your IT systems, so you can manage your business, while we manage your IT.
To learn more about how image-based backups could help your business, contact us today. Phone our team directly on 031 812 9650. Or request a free assessment and we’ll call you back soon.
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