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Have a Plan for Your Backup Software

Before doing anything else, have a plan of what you expect your new backup software to do for you. To do this, you will need to find out which of your other existing software applications is generating the largest backups, and how your backup windows -the time taken to actually perform a backup- are planned too minimize inconvenience to system users.

Once you have done that, the second part of this plan is to make your best estimates of how your backup needs will grow, and plan a practical way to monitor these needs. Thirdly, and most important, make a thorough evaluation of your existing backup system - both hardware and software- to reveal how it can integrate with any planned upgrades. Knowing this will place you in a better position to when you start to evaluate commercial products.

Ensure Your Backup Software is Appropriate

Make sure that your backup software package is matched to your operations, it is very easy to to pay too much for money for the wrong backup software that doesn't do the job you want it for. Data centers, PC LANs, telecommuters, and remote offices all generate different amounts of data, in different ways, and in turn have different backup software needs. It is tempting, and occasionally possible, to try and standardize on one vendor's backup software. Avoid putting too much emphasis on this.

The main priority should be to "tier" your backup strategies based on your corporate requirements, though it might make sense to cut down to one backup software vendor within each tier. You may also find yourself tempted to unload the whole problem by hiring a professional service to come in and make sure your backup operations are running well.

Don't rush into this, it is unlikely that you will realize any return on investment by doing this, even in the in the long run, unless these people are also going to train your staff how to improve backups. They are unlikely to agree to this as it is not in there interests, so it is more probable that you will be creating a new dependency on a third-party when your own team should really be able to do it.

Plan Ahead for You Backup Software Needs

Look as far ahead as you can at developing technologies likely to become available, and consider how they could be deployed in your environment. One fundamental but rapidly developing technology is the ever growing number of backup monitoring tools. The latest generation of these tools can provide very useful reports on whether or not your backups have been completed, and they also provide an analysis report of why failed backups didn't complete.

There are other versatile software packages, such as continuous backups that eliminate backup windows, that you should also considered in terms of future deployment.

You should test, test, and test again before rolling out any backup software upgrades. Finally, a good time to upgrade you backup software is when you upgrade your servers.