Your website is your shop window. It’s one of the most important parts of your growing business and downtime can cost you money. In 2012 Amazon.com went down for just 30 minutes. It cost Amazon $66,240 a minute – roughly $2 million based on their net sales at the time.[1]
Whilst your business might not be the corporate behemoth Amazon is, downtime can cost your company vital business and more importantly damage the credibility of your organisation. A comprehensive Site Recovery strategy should be key part of a holistic IT infrastructure plan for any business.
What is Site Recovery?
It’s a contingency plan that springs into action if the worst case scenario happens. It’s a plan that is designed to help maintain the day to day operation of your website. According to Gartner, only 6 percent of companies survive longer than 2 years after losing data. This startling statistic demonstrates the importance of having a Site Recovery strategy in place.
What is a Site Recovery strategy comprised of?
Normally, a Site Recovery strategy is made up of the following:
- Securely record key data: A site recovery strategy starts with securely recording key information that may be useful in the event of an outage. Things like your site login details, FTP login details, hosting provider, contact details etc.
- Regular scheduled backups: You should schedule regular backups of your site. Hosting providers can assist with this or dedicated backup platforms such as Azure Site Recovery can help. Cloud solutions like Azure Site recovery, constantly scan to identify whether your site is up or not and deploy automatically if down – assuring minimal downtime.
- Plan who does what, where and when: Having a clear plan for who does what when your site goes down will ensure a smooth recovery. Make sure all members of your team know where your backups and knowledge of where to obtain key data associated with your site.
Azure Site Recovery
Fortunately for businesses there are numerous Site Recovery services available. Some are cloud-based and are therefore cost-effective for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to take advantage of. Services like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
Christo van Zyl, Director of Managed IT Services at Advantage offers his advice on a Site Recovery strategy:
“I recommend Azure Site Recovery. SMEs lack the time, money and infrastructure to design a comprehensive disaster/site recovery plan. Azure Site Recovery takes a lot of the hard work off your hands and gives you the security and peace of mind you need and want. It’ll automate the duplication of your site, store it securely and has a suite of automation options if your site goes down.”
“Not to mention the cost. It’s far more cost-effective for a SME to utilise Azure Site Recovery as you won’t need to invest in expensive infrastructure and expertise. It’ll be part of your subscription service to Microsoft.”
What you should do next
Contact Advantage’s Managed Services team on 020 3004 4600 to discuss implementing your Site Recovery strategy or check out our website.
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