How Managing Your Data and Backups is Similar to Auto Maintenance

By Chris Castro, Solutions Architect, cStor

All of us need to get to different places at different speeds. Some of us ride bicycles, others take buses, trains, rideshare or planes, but the majority probably drive some sort of personal vehicle. And let’s face it, nothing man-made is perfect or runs forever without a little help every now and then. The bottom line is that maintenance needs to be performed on all these vehicles.

For public transportation, maintenance is pretty much handled by the owner/operator of the vehicle, and they usually have an extensive team certified to perform those duties. When it comes to personal vehicles, like a bicycle or car, you have options. You can opt to do the work yourself, or you can pay an expert to service your vehicle.

For many years, I changed the oil in my own car and occasionally replaced the brake pads. But now that my schedule has become so busy with work, the gym, volleyball and home improvement projects, I don’t feel like I have the time to dedicate to working on my car myself. Not to mention that it’s miserable being under a car when it’s 105 degrees outside.

I choose to pay for a service and bring my car to the dealership. I make an appointment over the phone, show up at the time of my scheduled appointment and drive off in a loaner car. Once they are done with the service, I return and have a brief chat with my service advisor, which gives me peace-of-mind that my car was taken care of as recommended by the manufacturer. In some cases, my service advisor lets me know that there are other things that might need attention sooner or later, which I probably wouldn’t have known on my own because the reality is, I’m not a certified car mechanic. Then, when it comes to the dreaded cashier’s desk, I feel like I need to take a couple of calming breaths before I get up there. Why? Well, I still don’t like the idea of paying for the service.

Expert Backup and Data Management

So, what does this all have to do with your data center and managed backups? Quite a bit actually! The reality is, although the office or cubicle you are managing your backup environment from might not be as dangerous as the Phoenix pavement in the summer, to the business, it could be. What if your busy, overworked employees get behind on backups? What if there is something they are missing but don’t realize it?

According to a recent CSO article, approximately 70% of business people have experienced (or will experience) data loss due to accidental deletion, disk or system failure, viruses, fire or some other disaster. Of those, 29% said the data loss was due to human error.

In addition to data loss risks, your time, or your employee’s time, is much more valuable these days. The last thing that you want to do is spend an entire day or week managing your backups because you feel like you or someone on your team can do it themselves. It’s best to leave the management of backups to a team of experts which will allow you to focus on more important things for the business.

With experts managing your backups, you will always know your data is secure, your systems are functioning properly and when you’re approaching the capacity limits of your environment. Sure, the annual or monthly cost might seem like an added expense, but you’ll have peace-of-mind knowing your environment is being managed according to the manufacturer’s best practices and more importantly, backups are completing successfully and on-time. The worst situation you could find yourself in is needing to do a restore of data because the environment has been mismanaged or neglected over the years, then finding out your data is gone! Don’t be one of those people. Save yourself the frustration and time of managing your backup environment yourself and pay a professional team to do it right.