Despite both being fundamental to business continuity, there is still a lot of confusion between back-up and Disaster Recovery (DR). Given the strategic importance of these technologies, clarity is essential.

Back-up and DR are mature concepts, so it’s surprising  that there’s confusion between the two. Perhaps it’s because back-up and DR solutions are often marketed as complete, one-size-fits-all solutions, blurring the lines between one another. Whatever the reason, the reality is these are two very distinct and different functions and so must be treated as such.

For effective recovery, you need to be able to retrieve files, or possibly complete systems, as quickly and efficiently as possible.

In this blog, we’re setting the record straight and busting five of the most common myths we regularly encounter when it comes to back-up and DR. 

Here are 5 common myths that have been believed as fact:

1. Backup is Enough

Put simply, backup and DR are not the same.

Back-up tools are used to take regular copies of files and folders for quick and easy restoration in the event of small-scale deletion, corruption or loss. You can think of it as “I’ve broken a file and I want to recover it from an hour ago.”

Disaster Recovery is far more in-depth; think of it as your lifeline when your entire company is down but needs to keep working. DR wraps up the technologies and processes required to bring one or all of your applications (including data) back online after a serious incident (literally a ‘disaster’ – outage, cyberattack, ransomware infection, fire, flood etc). Typically, this will include fail-over systems to a secondary data centre, another cloud platform or another region in the public cloud. Using an off-site location enables you to bring systems, applications and data back online quickly and efficiently while urgent repair work is conducted in your data centre.

Because these two functions restore at very different levels, back-up alone isn’t enough to bring company operations back online, for example in the event of a ransomware attack. Both DR and back-up need to be considered and implemented to ensure your organisation keeps moving forward.

2. Technology Will Save the Day

Effective DR provisioning is focused on minimising business risk. Any technical solution needs to be assessed and configured according to your priorities. This means prioritising operations first, allowing you to establish how fast you need your systems to be back up and running. Remember that not all applications have the same impact on your business if they go down – some must be recoverable within a minute; others could lose a day’s worth of data from your Active Directory, with far less operational impact.

Once you stop thinking about technology and focus on the applications and their relative operational importance, you can make clearer, better-informed recovery decisions.

In an ideal world, all your systems could be backed up and recovered in real-time – but the cost would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, by assessing the relative importance of each application, you can define a tiered strategy built around your priorities, using slower, more affordable recovery options for less critical systems.

3. Everything Just Works

The beauty of back-up and disaster recovery technology is that once configured, it should just work. Indeed, these technologies are designed to be reliable and resilient so your data is always available when you need it. However, recovery procedures need to be tested – regularly – to ensure everything is ready to go in an emergency.

Regular DR testing will not only confirm that your data is available and recoverable, it will also identify where your DR plan needs to be adjusted to align with the changing priorities of your business. Because the worst time to discover there’s a problem with your disaster recovery provisions is when you are using them for real.  

4. DIY is Cheaper

Every IT function managed in-house represents a saving – at least in terms of budgets. Maximising budgets is important, but there are other factors to consider that may affect the total cost of ownership (TCO). Without careful analysis, you may find that the TCO exceeds headline costs, eliminating savings over the service term.

First, you need the right blend of skills and resources to configure, maintain and execute the disaster recovery plan quickly. For mission-critical operations, this means having people available 24x7x365 to deal with any emergency the moment it happens. If you cannot sustain that level of coverage, downtime incidents will take longer to resolve – and therefore increase the cost to your business.

Depending on your business activities, one additional hour of downtime could mean losses by tens of thousands of pounds – far more than the cost of outsourcing DR to JT's Cloud Backup solution, delivered in partnership with Ekco.

5. If It’s in the Cloud, It’s Safe

Microsoft 365 does offer safeguards to prevent data loss within tools and applications, helping secure the bulk of your data short term. However, you must understand how to use these tools because shorter data retention periods can lead to data unknowingly being deleted.

JT’s Cloud Backup solution improves on this by offering unlimited back-up retention for data, backing up as often as every five minutes — company-wide and without interruption. Meaning the window for data to be permanently lost is vastly reduced.