Local and cloud backups in your school
We can all tell stories of how we wish we had kept a document, class photo or video of an assembly. But what about the files we are required to keep?
SBS ICT's Kayleigh Fox (ICT Service Desk Support Assistant) and Paul Green (ICT Engineer) provide their experiences of backups from their extensive work with schools.
Loss of data for schools is a common occurrence, a simple click can delete a file required by many. The purpose of ensuring your data is backed up is imperative to the running of day to day tasks. Backing up allows you to recover documents, files, folders and even your whole school system. Recovery is key and when backing up data you should always have in mind what safeguards you need to recover if the worst were to happen. At School Business Services we support both onsite and online backup and can help you to recover any lost data with the right processes in place.
Local backup:
We suggest that you have a local backup device onsite to backup your servers and important software and documentation such as door entry systems, MIS software and library data. Having a local backup device would mean recovery would not require an internet connection to rebuild your network device or infrastructure. SBS recommends VEEAM Backup and can offer our support for this.
Consider fire, flood and theft
The problem with solely having onsite backup is the risk of damage to the external drive. We recommend that the physical drive is not stored close to or in the same room as the server. A worst case scenario can be avoided with the additional option of having an online backup in place.
Online/cloud backup:
This assumption is incorrect. Office 365 and Google contain the disclaimer that they cannot be held accountable for any data lost whilst using these cloud-based services and are unable to recover lost data. It is recommended that a third party is used to ensure the protection of data. SBS support and recommend Redstor and TekNov8. These can be used in addition to any onsite backup you currently have to ensure all data on your servers and devices are backed up as well as the addition of backing up any cloud platforms such as Google or Office 365.
Using these two solutions in conjunction with eachother gives your school maximum protection and minimal downtime if a disaster where to occur. These will also offer minimum downtime if a virus or ransomware were to attack your system.
SBS recommend that backups are regularly checked. For SBS customers, these will be checked daily for online backup and onsite backups weekly by our ICT engineers. It is imperative that these are monitored to ensure all data backups are running effectively. The best case scenario would be to recover data from the previous day to minimise data loss.
If you would like any further advice on how to backup your data or any advice on the products to use, we will be more than happy to help.
Get in touch today
Please contact our ICT Service Desk or Procurement team for all the technical and purchasing support we have to offer on 0345 222 1551 • Option 1 (ICT) | Option 7 (Procurement) or email ICTservicedesk@schoolbusinessservices.co.uk | procurement@schoolbusinessservices.co.uk
