Point & Click Software - Web Hosting

Disaster Recovery

According to an employee of another Delaware ISP, the following is their backup policy: "We copy the files over to another server once a week."

What does this mean for the customer who selects their service for web hosting? It means that you are in danger of losing all of your data unless you keep copies of your files. If your data were to be corrupted or mistakenly erased after you have done significant amounts of work, and this happens to fall between their weekly backups, you would be out of luck. (And presumably, with this kind of methodology, they have to remember to copy the files. What happens when they get busy?)

Any company which provides data storage as part of its business plan should have a solid, automated backup procedure and disaster recovery plan in place. A good backup policy should include an automated procedure to make nightly copies of files to removable media (such as tape, removable disk, or writable CD-ROMs). A good disaster recovery plan should include storing copies of files on removable media, and taking them to a locked facility offsite (for example, a bank vault). Why a locked facility? Because customers may have sensitive data which gets copied to the backup media. Any major computer company (such as IBM, Compaq, Dell, etc.) would confirm that this is an absolute necessity if a company is in the data service business.

When an ISP's backup policy involves merely copying files from computer to computer, all data would be lost if the comapany's computers were stolen, or the facility were to burn up in a fire. Thus, this kind of backup system (if you can even call it that) is a disaster waiting to happen.

When it comes to your company's website data, you can't be too careful. You should ask questions about an ISP's backup and disaster recovery plans, and get it in writing, before signing up for its services.