Today file, email, database and web servers are central to the operation of all businesses. So it is absolutely critical that these servers be protected against hardware failure, corruption, and accidental or deliberate data loss. This protection involves backing them up and whilst there are a variety of software and hardware products you might use to perform a backup, there are two main goals common to all.

First, we need to ensure that any data files or emails can be recovered, preferably not just to their most recent state but their state at various times back to when they were first created. And second, system backups allow us to get the server itself back up and running after a hardware failure with the least possible downtime or manual configuration.

Allied to back-up and often using the same hardware and software is archiving. Unlike back-up which typically involves taking regular snapshot images of the server, archiving involves making duplicate copies of a discrete set of data (such as an construction project or a set of accounts), either because that data set has hit a project milestone or because work on it is finished and it is going to be removed from the server.

In either case it is absolutely crucial that organisations have reliable tools and robust procedures for performing and managing back-ups.