There's a great feeling of relief and security when your critical data is safely tucked away in one or more off-site servers. But do you actually know where those servers are, who's managing them, or what happens if trouble strikes? Let's look at some critical considerations.

The first thing you need to know is what level of performance you can expect from your off-site server. This depends, in part, on what kind of storage setup you're getting. If you're in a shared hosting situation where your data sits on the same server as that of many other clients, you could run into data-access slowdowns from time to time. This may become more and more of a problem as your business's IT needs grow – at which point, you need to know you can upgrade to a more exclusive solution such as a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

The question of access is another critical consideration. Do you know what the service provider's maintenance schedule is, when it performs its own backup operations, and whether your access to the server will be hindered by these operations? Do you know what bandwidth your connection runs on, and how consistently connection speeds are maintained at the server end of the connection?

Last but not least, there's the issue of accountability. What do you do if something does go wrong with your server connection, or with the server itself? Do you know who you need to talk to? Is your provider ready to address those issues and work with you to get your data access up and running again quickly?

These are all important questions – and Gravity Systems has the answers. Contact our Austin IT managed services experts to learn about our remote server backup, recovery, and troubleshooting services. You're never far away from our skill and expertise!

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