Backing Up Your Data: Analytics Help Manage Data Backup

Businesses amass huge amounts of data. It’s all important, but it’s not all of equal importance. Working documents are more important than cache files, and the ideal strategy for backing up your data recognizes that. If the disk drive fails, it’s the live documents that need to be up to the minute. Analytics help a business define a backup strategy with priorities that reflect its needs.

Backing up your data

Retrospective analytics show how backups have performed in the past. Is the process keeping up with the file system? If it’s steadily falling behind, then it’s necessary to change the backup strategy or add resources. If it’s keeping up overall, it still makes a difference which files get priority. If important files get delayed because large downloads are hogging the duty cycle, that makes recovery harder.

Predictive analytics can warn of future shortcomings based on current trends. Perhaps the current backup storage is enough and the process isn’t falling behind, but extrapolating current trends may show that will change soon. Knowing in advance lets the IT manager add storage, request a faster data connection, or make changes in the backup process before there’s a crisis.

Keeping a history makes it possible to tell a one-time spike from a developing problem. If backing up your data is falling behind because of a huge chunk of incoming data, and that situation isn’t expected to persist, that’s not a major problem. If it happens often, it’s time to act.

More backup copies are better, but again there are priorities and cost considerations. Analyzing the backup data can help to identify the data that needs an extra level of protection. If a smaller volume is available for a secondary backup, what sets of files can it hold without exceeding its capacity? Which ones are most important?

Backing up your data is smart. Smart backing up is even better. Knowing what’s happening allows smart backup strategies. Contact us to learn how we can make your backups safer and smarter.

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