Data Redundancy – Why A Backup Failover Is Essential

You might have the latest model computer, with all the bells and whistles, and a dent in your bank account the size of a moon crater to show for it. You could have the latest, most advanced servers and routers, and numerous other bits of tech. But here’s the thing: it will fail.

Possibly (hopefully) not all at the same time, but it will, at some point, fail. All computer hardware does. It could be the result of an accident, age of equipment, cyber attack or natural disaster, but two things are guaranteed: 1) It will strike with little or no warning, and 2) You will lose your data. If you’re a business, this will be massively inconvenient, but if you’re a small business, it will be catastrophic. This is why you need a rock solid, reliable data redundancy backup failover plan.

Fortunately, we’ve left the tedious days of manual recovery and media-vaulted backups way behind us. Today, data backup and recovery is fast, secure, monitored and, most importantly, continuous.

So what do we mean when we talk about data redundancy?

Data redundancy is what we call it when the same piece of data is held in more than one place. This can either be two different places within a single database or in two different spots across multiple software environments. Data redundancy often occurs by accident, but more often, it happens deliberately to facilitate backup and recovery, safeguard information and foster consistency.

Making sure your data is redundant – that there are multiple sources of it available – is probably the most basic, yet most important step you can take to improve both its security and availability. In this way, even if one of your servers, disks or databases fails, your data will still be available.

How To Optimise Data Redundancy

As much as we advocate having multiple data sources, we also understand that we live in a world where budgets are a thing. It’s not massively cost-efficient to have infinite copies of a database or server all running at the same time. It helps to carry out a comprehensive audit of your data to work out how often a server or database fails and how important different sources are. You’ll then be in a better position to decide how much redundancy per data source you need.

Automated failover

Automated failover is like data redundancy on steroids. As its name implies, automated failover means that, should a particular part of your data infrastructure fail, it is immediately – and automatically – replaced with a backup component. This effectively eliminates the human error factor, as there’s no delay – and more importantly, no disruption to data availability – while you wait for an engineer to spot a failure and manually switch over to a backup system.

Eliminating Single Points Of Failure

It’s all very well doing all of the above and having multiple disks and servers forming a comprehensive redundant storage infrastructure. But if they all depend on a single network router, and that router crashes, this single point of failure can bring all your data redundancy efforts crashing down. It’s essential, therefore, to have infrastructure that is strategically architected to avoid this type of risk.

Have A Plan B For Power Outages

Of course, even the most well-planned, redundant network cannot do its job properly if there isn’t any power. It is well worth the investment to install a commercial grade generator so that power to mission-critical systems and servers – and to your redundancy network – won’t be disrupted if the lights go out.

A backup power system is also vital to keep VOIP phones operational, so when deciding on a generator, take this into account. Also look at your business plans for growth, to make sure you don’t invest in something that won’t meet your needs if your business scales.

At Huge Connect, we have a unique network architecture. This allows us to route your data traffic to a multitude of telecommunication network platforms. This means you enjoy continuous uptime and complete data redundancy. If your primary network fails, we’ll automatically reroute you to an alternate network, so your connectivity is maintained, and your data remains secure.

This is the beauty of data redundancy. So, ditch the dangers of downtime. Call us today.