Hurricane Dorian is fast approaching and now is categorized as a 5. Your current backup and disaster recovery plans should be one of the most important things on your mind.
So what should you do when it comes to saving your business and technology?
Steps to Take to Prepare
1st: Backups.
Every day, make sure you have good backups. Don’t just leave those backups sitting in your office. Make sure you have a copy in the cloud, or a copy that you can take with you. Our clients have zero to worry about. We maintain on-site backups as well as cloud backups at the same time and we keep 30+ days of retention. We also make sure you are getting a weekly report every Saturday so you can be sure that you do have proper backups in place. You can lose your computers, but if you have your files in a proper backup system, you can get back up and running in a fraction of the time from a worst case scenario.
2nd: Power.
No small business power protection in the world is going to save your business from direct lightening surges or power surges from transformers blowing nearby. Simply unplug the power from all your computers, servers, and networking equipment. This will help save 99% of your office. The only other method a surge can come through is via your DSL or Cable internet. If you have fiber internet you will be fine as fiber is glass and not copper. If you live in a potential flood zone, lift all your equipment off the floor and place it in the highest points possible.
3rd: Phones.
Almost all phone providers have a manner in which you can forward numbers to your cellphone. If you have an old school PBX/phone system this is the manner in which you would want to operate. If you have a VOIP phone provider, you can follow the same path, or in most cases you can simply take your office phones with you and they should operate from your home just fine. That way after the storm, you can still take calls normally.
This is the best time a cloud solution shines is during a catastrophic disaster. We experienced cases where Progress Energy had taken weeks to restore power, meanwhile their neighbor Four County Electric would have their customers back up and running in a much quicker time span. The benefit to this is that you can work anywhere in the world where there is power and internet. Want to take a vacation to get away from the hurricane but can’t miss work? Take a laptop with you and operate out of the cloud.
If you want to know more about a cloud VOIP solution, or a solution to operate your entire office within the cloud, give us a call. Each businesses answer will vary slightly depending on your vertical, budget, and needs. Most cloud solutions, spanned over time, will cost much more than running your server from within your own office but when times like this come, it can be worth it.
If you are curious about our backup solution and disaster recovery plans, give us a call now or visit us at our Wallace, NC office. 910-463-4299.
