Data is the lifeblood of modern organizations across the world. Considering its significance in building intelligent organizations, managing and protecting your data is critical. However, this could be challenging since most organizational data resides in different locations — on-premises storage systems, the cloud, SaaS applications or other devices. Managing data from different sources is getting complicated, and this could compromise your clients’ security.

Complete visibility with IT Glue and backup integrations

Most technicians don’t log into their backup solutions daily. Backup is more of a set-and-forget tool that is usually accessed only by administrators. Although, technicians might still need to access backup information occasionally.

With the Unitrends and Datto Continuity integrations in IT Glue, you get total visibility into your hardware assets and their backup details to determine whether they are protected. On top of understanding the backup health of your devices, you also need to understand the backup information of critical SaaS solutions you support, including Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

The new Datto SaaS and Spanning Backup integrations enable you to holistically understand the status of your protected assets and users with ease.

Ensure business continuity with Datto SaaS Protection

This new integration helps you auto-document Datto SaaS Protection information for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace services directly in IT Glue. Since your backup details reside right next to your IT documentation, you can easily determine which environments are protected or not.

You can view all your managed environments’ Datto SaaS Protection backup information in a single pane, including backup status, health, coverage and sync status. Without going into your backup tool, you get to know the exact backup status of all your managed environments, giving you complete peace of mind.

On a per-managed environment level, you can view details such as Protected Seats per application and Backup Health. On a global level, you can see the backup status of all managed environments. These details provide a holistic view into your organization’s backup status.

You’ll also see the Datto SaaS Protection Backup Percentage (in the last 24 hours) across all your managed environments, or per environment, giving you the granularity you need to manage your environments holistically.

Visit this Knowledge Base article for a step-by-step guide on how to set up the Datto SaaS Protection integration.

Complete Contact backup documentation with Spanning

With the new enhancement to the Spanning Backup integration, you can see both your Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup information in IT Glue, giving you a complete view into your user protection status.

With Spanning for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace integration in IT Glue, you can view your Mail, Calendar, Contacts and Drive backup details alongside the rest of your Contact information already in IT Glue. You can easily determine the user protection status for both Google and Microsoft solutions, along with other backup details like the last backup time, status, total protected asset size and asset backup time in IT Glue.

Visit this Knowledge Base article for more information on the Spanning Backup integration.

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In this blog, we shall discuss the importance of backup documentation and how you can leverage it to create the right backup strategy for your company or clients.

What is backup documentation?

Backup documentation refers to the process of documenting all the formal policies, asset backup details and other activities associated with backup. For instance, in the policy document, you can note down key factors like the location of the backups, type of backups, type of data stored and stakeholders responsible for the process.

Clear documentation of all your backup details and activities can provide critical insights into the overall backup health of your assets and the ideal backup practices that must be followed in an organization. MSPs can use their backup documentation to determine the status of backups, identify their clients’ needs and outline the backup services they provide to their clients.

Why is backup documentation important?

The primary goal of backup is to have a reliable method to recover lost data. Without automated and structured backup documentation, you risk improper and inefficient maintenance of your backups, or even worse, not documenting critical backup information at all. You need robust backup policies and full visibility into backup details to ensure everything is protected and you are prepared in case of any unforeseen events.

Backup policy documentation

A backup policy refers to a document containing guidelines and procedures on how backup data should be managed in an organization. It sets the ground rules for various aspects including backup planning, data types to be backed up, the importance of the backed-up data and more. In addition to procedures and guidelines, a backup policy should also contain information on responsible stakeholders and related documentation.

In an organizational setting, backup policy documents may differ from one company to another. Here’s a list of some of the common sections to be included in a backup policy.

Purpose and scope

This section focuses on the overall aim of the backup process in an organization. For instance, you can define the purpose of the backup policy to ensure business continuity following an unforeseen cyberattack. You should also clearly define what you intend to achieve with your backups to eliminate any ambiguity within your team.

Roles and responsibilities

The backup policy you create should clearly define the roles and responsibilities of all the stakeholders involved in backup and disaster recovery efforts. This section should have detailed information on who is responsible for monitoring the backup status periodically and who should be contacted when there is a need to restore information from the backup.

Compliance requirements

The backup policies created by organizations play a crucial role in compliance audits. You can use your backup policies to ensure you are in compliance with the regulatory laws governing the industry. For instance, there are specific data laws on how customer data should be stored and backed up in an organization. You can use your backup policy to outline the ways in which your clients can store customer data in their companies.

Data, systems and configurations

This section of the policy concerns the types of data that must be backed up and the systems and configurations that go alongside it. You need to create specific rules for specific types of data, how they must be stored, network configuration information, etc. This helps you retrieve your data in the most efficient way possible.

Backup frequency and schedule

When you have automated backups in your IT environment, you need to create a fixed schedule and frequency to ensure effective storage of recoverable information. Scheduling ensures your critical data is automatically backed up within the required timeframe. Moreover, scheduling allows you to keep your backup activities outside your business hours so that they don’t interrupt your core business tasks.

Backup methodology

Your backup policy also needs to address the backup methodology you are going to incorporate. A full backup stores all the files and systems in an IT environment. However, it is time-consuming and may not be feasible every single time. Once you have fully installed all your backup networks, you can set rules for incremental or differential backups based on your requirements. Your policy must have guidelines on the type of backups that must be performed.

Backup location and retention

Your backup policy should also focus on the storage location of your backup. Depending upon your backup strategy, you might have a cloud-based server, an on-site server or both. The location of your backup must be included in your backup schedules and specified in the backup policy. Besides knowing where your backups go, this also helps you adhere to compliance regulations.

Recovery objectives

Recovery time objective (RTO) refers to the time you have estimated to recover your lost data, and recovery point objective (RPO) concerns the maximum amount of data you can tolerate losing. RTO and RPO are highly critical to understand the overall objective of your backup plan. Including these metrics in your formal backup policy will help you with the effective retrieval of data.

Testing plan

Backup is not something that you can just implement and forget. It must be periodically tested to identify recurring issues and incorporate the necessary updates. Your backup policy should also include your testing plan with all the key details such as frequency of testing, responsible stakeholders and testing procedure.

Backup activity documentation

Backup is more of a set-and-forget process. However, you still need to know the status and integrity of your backups. In case of an unexpected disaster, this will help you get back online as quickly as possible. This is why it is extremely important to bring your backup information alongside the rest of your documentation. Moreover, this will also allow you to compare your asset inventory with your backup information. 

With the help of structured backup coverage reports, you can generate automatic reports that contain comprehensive information about all the backups and their status in your organization. The insights you derive from these reports, which include up-to-date status of backups and other critical details, can be used to identify assets that are not protected so you can quickly remedy the issue.

To make this work, your documentation tool must have an active integration with your backup solution. Once this is set up, you will simply have all of your backup information alongside the rest of your IT documentation. This will help you stay vigilant, and it also makes life convenient since you don’t have to access a different tool to verify your backups.

Being able to view your backups inside your documentation tool is just the first step. Quickly gain full visibility into your backup health standing with a report that includes the following details.

Backup summary

Determine at a quick glance the backup health of your IT environment with a summary count of successful backups, failed backups and unprotected assets. With a complete view of your backups, it’s easy to determine what requires your attention first to ensure you are protected.

Backup status

You can view a list of your assets categorized based on their backup status. For instance, you can choose to generate a report that will show only one or all of the following: successful backups, failed backups and no backups. This helps narrow your focus if you just want to see the assets that are not backed up yet, or alternatively, the backups that are in good standing.

Backup device details

Every backup report should show you complete backup details associated with each individual asset including configuration ID, type, status, and last backup date and time. To ensure you can efficiently and successfully back up your unprotected devices, select only the fields that you need and exclude unnecessary information.

Backup timeframe

You can also generate backup reports that only include backups from a specific timeframe if needed. For instance, you can view the list of the most recent backups in your network rather than a list of all protected assets since the very first backup you performed. You can also select specific date ranges to identify backups that happened over a certain period of time.

What are the benefits of backup documentation?

Managing backups in a complex IT environment is an extremely difficult process. In addition, accessing your backup solution is not a daily occurrence so it is vital you bring backup information into your documentation tool. Without maintaining proper documentation, you will be flying blind when it comes to effective storage and retrieval of critical data. Some of the notable benefits of backup documentation are as follows.

• Clarity: Both MSPs and IT teams can benefit a lot from the clarity offered by backup documentation. You will have well-established procedures, policies and guides on how to perform various backup tasks. Even in case of uncertainty, you will have clear information on what steps to take with regard to backup data.
• Accountability: When you have clear backup documentation, you can easily identify who is responsible for specific backup activities. Your documentation will also have clear instructions on how to contact the individuals associated with various tasks.
• Control: With backup documentation, you can maintain great control over backup activities. You can ensure failed backups are quickly dealt with or completely unprotected assets are backed up right away. Most importantly, you can access the backup details whenever you want.
• Full visibility: Backup documentation helps you identify which assets are protected and which aren’t by allowing you to review the list of assets in your inventory. MSPs can use this information to identify risks or opportunities in their clients’ environments and create more revenue for business growth.
• Business growth: MSPs can manage the backups of multiple clients easily with the help of clear backup documentation. MSPs can also convey the benefits of device backup health to their new customers and sell new solutions to them. Leveraging backup documentation the right way can help MSPs sell more backup solutions and grow their business.

Disaster Recovery Runbook: Maximize recovery efficiency following a disaster

Every single minute following a disaster is crucial. You must be able to manage your time well and be as efficient as possible to bring everything back up to speed. This can be achieved when you integrate your backup solution with your documentation tool, so you can take advantage of a Disaster Recovery (DR) Runbook. With DR Runbook, you get an outline of all the protected assets after a disaster with the correct boot order. This also ensures that no devices are missed, left with errors or rebooted incorrectly.

Document backups with IT Glue

According to IBM, the average cost of data loss caused by a breach is $4.35 million in 2022. With the evolving cyberthreats in this digital world, facing an attack is not a matter of “if” but “when.” It goes without saying that organizations should leverage the right backup and documentation solutions to protect themselves and ensure minimal downtime. With backup documentation, you can establish the right backup strategy for your organization.

IT Glue is a brand trusted by over 13,000 IT professionals as their single source of truth for all information in the IT environments they manage. By integrating IT Glue with your backup solution, you can save time and reduce operational costs. You can access all your backup information from Datto Continuity, Unitrends and Spanning in a single pane of glass alongside the rest of your documentation to increase backup visibility and asset protection.

To learn more about how IT Glue can help you master backup documentation, request a demo.

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Having all your backup information in one place by centralizing its documentation would help you gain a grip on this problem since it will increase the visibility of all your data and reduce in real time the risks they’re exposed to. It will also help you stay compliant with data protection frameworks and keep your business safe.

Find out how you can easily and comprehensively document your backup systems with our Datto Continuity, Unitrends and Spanning integrations. These will help ensure your backup and recovery processes are running the way they’re supposed to without any problems.

Keep your backup information with the rest of your documentation

IT Glue is trusted by over 13,000 IT professionals as their single source of truth for all information in the IT environments they manage. Our growing number of integrations enable you to get a complete view of your IT environment by bringing in important information from your tech stack including PSA, RMM, network monitoring, Microsoft and backup solutions into our platform.

Technicians usually don’t log into the backup solutions daily. By consolidating your backup information and having it rest next to your other IT Glue documentation helps you stay more vigilant. It helps you increase the security of your assets and users. Also, it makes life convenient for you and your techs since you don’t have to access a different tool to verify your backups.

Integrating IT Glue with your backup solution saves time and reduces operational costs. You can access all your backup information from Datto Continuity, Unitrends and Spanning efficiently in a single pane of glass alongside the rest of your documentation to increase its visibility and protection.

Spanning for Microsoft

The newly launched Spanning for Microsoft integration in IT Glue lets you view your Microsoft Mail, Calendar, Contacts and OneDrive backup details altogether alongside the rest of your Contact Information that’s already in IT Glue. You can easily determine the user protection status for each of these Microsoft solutions along with other backup details like the last backup time and status, total protected asset size and asset backup time in IT Glue.

Datto Continuity 

The Datto Continuity integration in IT Glue enables IT professionals to check the status, integrity and setup of Datto backups across all protected assets. It lets you see the last backup time, last backup status, the latest recovery point for the backup and whether the backup was successful.

The integration will also enable you to automatically document the Datto SIRIS appliance in IT Glue. This includes the documentation of details such as used storage (local), available storage (local), cloud storage used and last check-in time. Additionally, these fields from Datto will be visible in IT Glue as Device Details from the latest backup: protected volumes count, unprotected volumes count, protected names and unprotected names.

Unitrends integration

This integration shows you status updates from all your Unitrends backups, including the last backup time and storage for endpoints in IT Glue. Additionally, it allows you to create a Backup Coverage Report and DR Runbook so you can bypass a lot of administrative work to keep track of your assets.

Backup Coverage Report

You can produce an automated PDF report to show the current backup state of any internal or client networks. This helps you discover risks or opportunities to create more revenue. You can determine how vulnerable a network may be if a disaster were to happen and prepare for it using the findings in this report.

DR Runbook

Every single minute after a disaster is crucial and you must be able to manage your time well and be as efficient as possible to quickly bring everything back up to speed so you can minimize downtime and cut or limit your (financial and other) losses.

With the new IT Glue DR Runbook, you can export an automated runbook that outlines all the Unitrends protected assets when a disaster strikes. This includes the most up-to-date device data to help you get the necessary information for recovery, ensuring no machines are missed, left with errors or incorrectly rebooted.

The DR Runbook lets you begin the recovery process instantaneously and you can even specify the boot order in which you want your machines to be recovered.

Get complete backup documentation in IT Glue

If you’d like to learn more about how you can optimize your backup and recovery processes with smart documentation, schedule a 1:1 demo session with one of our documentation experts.

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