How to Choose the Best Backup Software Solution for School Districts?

As an IT director, the task of choosing the best backup software solution for your school district is a daunting one. The different options include Cloud, Off-site, and Open-source solutions.

The following article will discuss these options and their pros and cons. We’ve also included a brief description of Cohesity, an open-source solution. This solution allows the IT director to easily update backup agents without restarting the servers.

Off-site

Off-site school district storage solutions can help schools comply with data protection legislation and the UK’s Data Protection Act. Most school districts back up data daily or hourly, with frequently accessed files stored on a local hard drive, DVD, or flash drive.

However, when the need arises to restore data from these local sources, a robust off-site backup software solution will facilitate the process. This software will also manage the shift from local storage to the cloud, so that staff members can expect faster performance if they access backed-up data from local storage.

Off-site data backup software is secure compared to traditional methods, and most of these solutions are automated, typically daily. The software will continue to back up data from multiple locations even if the main server goes down.

Off-site backup software can even pause backups for the duration of the backup, saving both time and bandwidth. And, because data is stored in multiple locations, off-site backup is more reliable than onsite backup methods.

Cloud

A Cloud backup software solution for school districts can provide a variety of benefits, including local storage of files and access to over 1,000 different cloud destinations.

Most such solutions support data backup to multiple locations, including Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft Azure. You can even configure backups to be performed automatically, using special conditions.

In addition to the cloud, school data can also be stored on flash drives and DVDs. With the right software, a school district can enjoy the security and cost savings of using a Cloud backup solution.

Before choosing a Cloud backup software solution for a school district, conduct a comprehensive data inventory.

List all applications, the size of their data sets, and any existing security protocols to ensure that they are secure and efficient.

Next, determine how to migrate data to the Cloud. Consider a hybrid solution that uses existing local infrastructure and modern cloud infrastructure. If you’re unsure of how to migrate data, try using a combination of cloud and local storage.

Open-source

As the number of students and files stored on computers increases, a school district’s network is also loaded with data. Furthermore, because of the growing usage of these systems, people are also storing more sensitive data.

Consequently, losing all of this data can have a detrimental impact on the learning process. To avoid such a scenario, schools need to have a backup solution in place that can provide them with the historical data they require.

Amanda is a backup system written in Perl and C that allows a system administrator to back up a network of client machines. Amanda was developed at the University of Maryland in 1991 and has a BSD-style license.

Back In Time is another open-source solution for school districts, and it is an easy-to-use backup utility for Linux. It includes both a command-line client and a GUI. It is licensed under the GPLv2 license.