The 3-2-1 rule of Disaster Recovery has admittedly been around for a long time, but some things are timeless and the 3-2-1 rule is one of these classics.
This rule could help your business overcome almost any failure scenario if you follow it correctly, but despite this, many companies still chose to ignore it and many don’t know what it is.
What is the 3-2-1 rule?
The rule states that your business should:
- Have at least THREE copies of your data available
- Keep these backups on at least TWO different outlets
- Store ONE backup offsite
Have at least three copies of data
Having three copies of your data means to have your original data and two backups of this information.
Having one backup is a good start, but what happens if that data is corrupted or inaccessible? If you do happen to only have one backup, at the very least make sure that it is stored in a completely different location from the original data.
Keep the backups on two different outlets
If you have two backups of your data and chose to store them on the same device, then you’re simply asking for trouble. In its simplest form, if you stored two copies of your data on a flash drive and the flash drive failed, it was pointless storing two copies! If you have two copies of your data stored on two different flash drives and one fails, then you have a second copy on another drive.
The 3-2-1 rule urges businesses to keep data on a number of mediums, including the cloud and physical drives.
Store one backup offsite
By offsite, the rule means another location, hopefully as far away as possible from your original copy. Going back to the flash drive example, if you keep two copies of your data in the same office as your original and it floods then you’ve lost all of your data. If you store one flash drive in a secure location in another town, you still have access to your data.
Cloud Computing eliminates many issues from traditional disaster recovery and tape-based methods. Solutions such as CloudCover™ and Veeam Cloud Connect seamlessly enable the replication of information to third party data centres worldwide.
