Backup and disaster recovery are two related but distinct things: a backup is a copy of your data, and disaster recovery is the plan for actually using that copy to get back online. Most businesses have some version of the first and no real version of the second — and the gap only becomes visible at the worst possible time.
What a reasonable backup setup includes
- Automated, scheduled backups — not backups that depend on someone remembering to run them
- At least one copy stored somewhere other than the same server (a separate location or provider)
- A retention window long enough to recover from a problem that isn't noticed immediately
- A backup that has actually been restored at least once, to confirm it works
The step most businesses skip: testing the restore
A backup that has never been restored is an assumption, not a safeguard. It's common to discover, only during an actual emergency, that a backup was incomplete, corrupted, or incompatible with the current server environment. A basic test restore — even to a temporary staging environment — is the only way to know the backup will actually work when it's needed.
When disaster recovery planning becomes necessary
For a simple informational website, 'we have backups' may be a sufficient plan. For a website that processes payments, stores customer records, or is the primary way customers reach the business, a written disaster recovery plan is worth having: who is responsible for initiating recovery, how long recovery is expected to take, and what happens to transactions or bookings made during the outage.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Confusing a hosting provider's own infrastructure redundancy with having a backup of your own
- Storing backups in the same account or server they're meant to protect against
- Never testing whether a backup can actually be restored
- Having no documented plan for who does what during an outage
Backup and disaster recovery are inexpensive relative to the cost of extended downtime or permanent data loss — the work is mostly in verifying what you already have, not necessarily buying something new.