Your system has crashed. It’s 3pm and your last snapshot was two hours ago. All the work your organisation has done for the last couple of hours is lost. This includes all the user and application files your employees and partners have been collaborating on and sharing with others.
And now, as well as trying to bring your system back online, your team is also fielding calls and emails, asking what’s happened to valuable work that simply can’t be retrieved.
It’s easy to imagine, because just about all of us have been there. Backup solutions act as a safety net. But the cost and the sheer volume of storage required for backing up data means that we have to compromise on how often we snapshot our data. The impact of this is two-fold. As well as the time and cost of restoring backed up data, you’re also left with gaps, data that wasn’t captured in the last snapshot is lost forever.
Ten years ago, losing a few hours’ data would perhaps have been a manageable setback. But now, as we increasingly rely on digital workflows and real-time collaboration, even small data losses can result in serious financial, operational and reputational damage.
You might already have something in your IT arsenal that could help and you may not even realise it. Some real-time distributed file management systems, which are often used for basic file access or collaboration, offer the opportunity to synchronise your data across different locations in real time. Which means you already have a copy of your data – and it’s up-to-date not just a snapshot from earlier in the day.
Making your real-time file sync work harder
To protect your data from loss, a real-time file sync solution just needs a few adjustments. Do this to maximise your software’s potential:
1. Optimise your data synchronisation for backup and recovery
If you’re already using real-time file sync software, it likely enables your colleagues to share and collaborate on documents wherever they are. The technology replicates data in different data centres to enable local file access for performance and may even have file locking to ensure versioning. It’s this functionality that we can tap into.
To make sure critical files are safeguarded, set up real-time synchronisation to multiple locations, including a designated backup target. For added protection, consider using immutable Object storage, which prevents unauthorised changes and is resistant to ransomware and malware attacks. This approach ensures that data is continuously replicated and readily recoverable.
2. Automate failover and failback
When designing real-time file replication workflows, consider implementing a global namespace like Microsoft DFSN. This enables seamless failover and failback capabilities, ensuring uninterrupted access to project files across primary file servers and other servers in collaboration environments, even during an outage.
After a failover event, the system automatically synchronises all changes made when they come back online.
This approach reduces reliance on fragmented backups, maintains productivity during system downtime, and eases the burden on admin teams.
3. Secure your sync
Using real-time file sync to protect your data can only work if you’re certain that the system is secure. There are so many different ways your data could be lost or changed in error. Mitigate risks by using end-to-end encryption for in-transit and stored data.
Then limit access to essential users. Use role-based permissions to restrict file access to authorised users. For example, you could only allow HR or legal staff to view or modify specific files.
And monitor for unusual activity with alerts to detect and respond to suspicious behaviour. So, if a large number of files are suddenly modified or deleted, your team can respond quickly and protect your data.
4. Monitor and test your sync performance
With real-time file sync now part of a business continuity plan, it’s even more important to make sure it’s working well, that all critical data is synced and that any bottlenecks or weak points are spotted early.
Include performance monitoring in your continuity strategy. Set realistic targets and be clear what level of performance you need to protect your most critical data. And agree to the actions you’ll take if your software’s performance falls short.
5. Integrate with business continuity plans
It’s time to think beyond the IT tool label, and instead position real-time file sync as a critical component of your broader business continuity strategy. Integrating it into continuity planning ensures you don’t end up overlooking it. And it’ll be easier to spot opportunities to bridge gaps in disaster recovery protocols.
Position real-time sync as part of your continuity framework – show how you’ll sync data to geographically redundant servers and ensure teams can work remotely during outages.
Take another look at real-time sync
IT teams often view file sync as a collaboration tool. A closer look shows that it can significantly benefit business continuity too, often outperforming traditional snapshot backups. With zero recovery gap, continuous workflow and faster recovery times, teams can pick up right where they left off. With real-time synch, there’s no need to manually restore large snapshot data.
And while snapshots have an important role to play as part of a layered backup strategy, your existing real-time file sync helps to ensure business continuity during day-to-day operations.
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