If your network goes down, your shop floor will grind to a halt.
In a manufacturing environment, there’s no room for downtime. That’s why you make sure that every piece of equipment you run is in tip-top shape. You conduct regular maintenance checks on every machine. And when a repair is required, you don’t fix it with Band-Aids. Heaven forbid!
But when was the last time you tested your backup and disaster recovery systems (BU/DR)?
Your backup and disaster recovery systems need just as much care as your shop floor equipment. And Band-Aids won’t fix them if they go down. What you need is preventative maintenance. Because we all know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and a ton of Band-Aids.
What is the “gold standard” for testing and maintaining your BU/DR systems? Monthly would be a great plan. It doesn’t take a lot of time or effort to test these systems on a regularly scheduled basis.
You should be able to answer in the affirmative to these two critical questions:
- Is your data stored in a secure location?
- Do you have a second copy of your data stored off-site in another secure location?
- In the event of a disaster (e.g., fire, flood, theft), can you bring your systems up in a reasonable timeframe?
For how long is your backup data stored? Many backup systems only store data for 30 days. But if your backup system is down and you haven’t realized it, you could lose months of data. That’s why it’s a good idea to check it often.
Better yet, consider a cloud backup and disaster recovery solution that provides:
- Built-in data redundancy
- Automatic “self-healing”
- Reliability
- High availability
- Security
- Scalability
- Data storage
- System redundancy in the event of a disaster
Cloud backup solutions may cost more than your on-premises manual backup systems, but they’re worth it when you consider the value of your data. And don’t forget to factor in the cost of your time and priceless peace of mind.
Strategic Systems Group (SSG) works with hundreds of manufacturers on a dozen different ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Systems. And the one thing they all have in common is that they cannot afford downtime.
SSG is your one-stop shop for ERP manufacturing software. We’re at www.ssgnet.com, 310-539-4645, and info@ssgnet.com.
Related Posts
Moving Your ERP to the Cloud = Moving Into the 21st Century
Why We Are the One-Stop Shop for Manufacturing Software Solutions