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IT services HoustonAn IT services provider in Houston can do a lot to help your business optimize and to protect your operations even in the shadow of tech solutions provided through big businesses, like Azure Cloud.

Microsoft launched its Azure cloud platform 10 years ago, in 2008. In general, it’s been a very profound, effective solution for many businesses. However, it’s not a solution that’s perfect. No cloud computing solution is. To date, over the past 10 years, there have been nine instances where outages have taken place. One of the easiest to make sense of took place in 2012, when somebody calculated leap-year changes wrong, leading to an outage. Now it’s important to note that during such outages, not all users were affected–but many were; including some who didn’t even realize they would be at risk for such a thing, like XBOX Live users.

Human error is everywhere humans are, so you must design fail-safe solutions as a means of counteracting this reality. Conventionally, such fail-safe data protection measures, in terms of technology, are defined under the abbreviation BDR, which stands for Backup and Data Recovery. For your cloud, you need to do a few things in order to ensure the securest operation:

  • Back up sensitive files in multiple redundant locations
  • Ensure backups are made as continuously as possible
  • Have a disaster-preparedness plan in place

Multiple Redundant Locations

IT services providers in Houston often recommend businesses employ the “3-2-1-” rule. Basically, you want three backups, two of which are on more than one kind of data preservation medium, and one of which is located off-site. You could backup sensitive operational data from the cloud to on-site servers or to an external hard drive. If the data set is large enough, you may use two clouds to provide support for one another. You might use Microsoft Azure as your primary cloud, and Amazon as your backup. Partnering with an MSP can help you find the most comprehensive and cost-effective solution.

Continuity of Backups

Ideally, you want to back up data whenever your network is augmented. This isn’t always feasible, work with an MSP to determine the best times you can regularly backup data.

Disaster Preparedness

User error, political intrigue, cybercrime–there are many reasons your systems could crash. Design response protocols to be immediately initiated whenever a disaster occurs and work with an MSP to both create and test them.

Reliable Operations

IT services in Houston from ICS can help you design backup solutions which maintain the integrity of cloud data even in the face of rare cloud issues. Contact us now to help you define an appropriate BDR solution.