A good backup plan is a lot trickier than it seems at first look. Some business owners have been told that since they have raid and a backup tape drive they are all set.
It all comes down to a failure of imagination. Imagine the following scenarios:
Situation: The raid controller fails in your four year old server. This leaves you with good drives but this raid controller is no longer being made and you can not access your drives without a replacement.
Diagnosis: Days to recover your data if you are lucky on eBay.
Situation: Your server dies and your attempt to recover from tape.
Diagnosis: The chances of the data being on the tape and recoverable are very small unless you have done regular restore trials.
Situation: You have problem with Quickbooks but it seems to be OK. A week later you find out that the receivable file is half missing.
Diagnosis: Unless you can go back in time and get an older version of that file you may be in big trouble.
Situation: You have a problem with the building, fire, theft flood etc.
Diagnosis: If all your tapes are right next to the server they may be gone too. If you have a tape home but can’t find a replacement drive you are still going go be down a long time.
We could give you many more disaster scenarios but you get the point.
We have a robust proven backup solution. Hint: we don’t use tape.