FEMA reports that as many as 60% of small businesses never recover after a disaster and are forced to close. This finding highlights the need not only for trustworthy backups, but also for the ability to keep systems running. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are on the front lines of these challenges and rely on tools and infrastructure that protect critical business data for their customers.
So, how do you go about purchasing a business continuity solution that empowers your MSP business with backup reliability and consistent restoration outcomes? We’ve pulled together the key aspects that you should look for when researching business continuity and disaster recovery tools.
1. Inverse Chain Technology: Inverse Chain technology combats the high failure rates associated with most backup offerings and leverages the snapshot and clone capabilities within ZFS for efficient storage management. Inverse Chain provides freedom over other types of chains such as traditional backup chain, reverse chain, synthetic full and incremental forever, enabling more frequent backups and flexibility over incrementals.
2. Advanced Backup Verification: Advanced Backup Verification takes Datto’s patented Screenshot Verification to the next level to give MSPs 100% confidence in their backups. Not only does the system use Screenshot Verification to ensure every backup will boot, it also uses Local Verification (file system, volume, VSS, and ransomware checks), application and service verification, and support for custom verification scripts to verify all aspects of the system being backed up.
- Reliable backups empower MSPs to know that they can easily address end user’s data failures. Backup verification empowers MSPs to trust in the reliability of the saved backup and to sleep better at night knowing their client data is protected. Backup verification also guarantees that less maintenance is necessary. When backup and restore options are trustworthy, MSPs save time which they can use to deliver more value to their customers.
3. Bare Metal Restore w/ Fast Failback: While a BMR is in progress, customers can continue business operations by failing over with Datto’s instant virtualization. With some business continuity products,challenges occur in capturing changes made while the customer is running in the virtual environment. These products, require the MSP to plan downtime in order to copy those changes from the virtual environment back to the production system. Look for a technology that copies any changes made in the virtualized state back to the production system, with no downtime.
4. File Restoration: File and Direct Restore can recover files and folders to help save the day for panicked customers. File Restore is available from the web UI, making it remotely accessible. Having this enables MSPs to restore one or many files with their meta data and settings preserved.
5. Rapid Rollback: Rapid Rollback automatically and nearly instantaneously identifies any files or folders that have been changed from the backup to the original system, and flags them to restore. The result is a quick and easy restore process that efficiently gets customers back up and running without the need to perform a full Bare Metal Restore.
6. Instant Virtualization: Instant Virtualization can be particularly helpful in the case of a ransomware attack. For many backup systems, when a ransomware attack is initiated, encrypted data can be copied to the backup and make the latest restore point unusable. You want a simple failover with instant virtualization, so you can revert to another recovery point.
7. Global Storage Protection: Look for a geo-redundant private cloud storage, so that MSPs can rest easily during a disaster knowing that their data is physically protected, even if an entire region goes down. When it comes to storing data, MSPs can choose where in the world their data lives and have additional flexibility to create different retention schedules for local and off-site backups. By setting different retention schedules, the MSP can optimize WAN usage and still maintain the protection needed by their clients
The seven components above are ones that all MSPs should look into when trying to find the best Business Continuity solution for their business. To learn more about the many ways BCDR can be the best investment for your business, click here.
Christian Kane is product marketing manager for Unified Continuity at Datto. Read more Datto guest blogs here.
