What needs backing up?
Data Backup Services South Africa is the difference between a bad morning and a closed business. It covers taking copies of your data, keeping them somewhere the same disaster cannot reach, and proving they restore. Describe what has to be protected and compare prices and recovery times.
Describe what has to be protected and get backup quotes. Replies come from independent, LEADERR APPROVED providers.
Get the Best QuoteWhat a Proper Backup Looks Like
- Three copies. The live data and two backups, so one failure cannot take both.
- Two kinds of storage. Local disk and cloud, or disk and tape, rather than two of the same.
- One copy off site. A fire or a theft reaches everything in the building.
- One copy immutable. Ransomware looks for the backups, and deletes them if it can.
- Tested restores. The only evidence a backup works is a file brought back.
- Known recovery times. How long a full restore takes, measured rather than assumed.
What Gets Missed
- Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Not backed up by the platform in the way people assume.
- Laptops. Files saved to the desktop are often outside every backup.
- Line of business databases. Need an application-aware backup, not a file copy.
- Cloud servers. A snapshot in the same account is not an off-site copy.
- Configuration. Firewall and server settings take days to rebuild from memory.
- The restore procedure. Written down, with the passwords stored somewhere the outage does not affect.
Data Backup Services Prices
Ballpark figures so you can check a quotation.
| Item | Ballpark price |
|---|---|
| Cloud backup, per 100GB per month | R250 - R700 |
| Server backup with local appliance, per server per month | R1,200 - R3,800 |
| Workstation backup, per device per month | R85 - R280 |
| Microsoft 365 backup, per user per month | R45 - R120 |
| Backup appliance, small business, supplied | R25,000 - R95,000 |
| Disaster recovery plan and documentation | R15,000 - R65,000 |
| Annual restore test and report | R6,500 - R28,000 |
| Emergency restore assistance, per hour | R850 - R1,800 |
Prices JUST UPDATED. Ballpark figures, rounded, excluding VAT. They reflect typical South African IT support and technology rates. They are not our prices or quotations, and no provider is bound by them. Confirm what each quotation includes, such as how many users or devices are covered, the response times, after-hours cover and licence fees.
Get a price for your own data volume rather than a range.
Get the Best QuoteWhat Affects the Price
- How much data. Nearly every cloud backup is priced on stored volume.
- How far back you need to go. Longer retention means more stored copies.
- How fast you must be back. An hour of downtime costs far more to design for than a day.
- How many machines. Per device pricing across a fleet adds up.
- Whether there is a local appliance. It speeds restores and raises the up-front cost.
- Whether restores are tested. A scheduled test with a report is extra, and worth it.
- Your internet upload speed. It sets how long the first backup and any restore will take.
What to Include in Your Request
- What has to be protected. Servers, laptops, cloud mail and files, and which applications.
- How much data. Total size now, and how fast it grows.
- How long you could be down. An honest number, not an aspiration.
- How much work you could lose. A day, an hour, or none.
- What you have now. Including whether anyone has ever restored from it.
- Your internet line. Upload speed above all.
Before You Choose a Plan
- Ask for a restore test in the contract. Scheduled, documented and reported on.
- Ask how long a full restore takes. Measured for your data volume and your line speed.
- Ask whether backups are immutable. Copies that cannot be deleted for a set period.
- Check what is actually covered. List the machines and services and tick them off.
- Ask where the data is stored. Which country, and whether that matters for your clients.
- Ask what happens if you leave. How you get your data out, and in what format.
Data Backup Services FAQs
Does Microsoft 365 back up my email?
Not in the way most people assume. There is retention and a recycle bin, but no point in time restore of a mailbox or a document library from months ago, and a deleted account takes its data with it after a short window. Third party backup for Microsoft 365 costs a small amount per user and is the gap most often discovered during an incident.
How often should backups run?
Decide by how much work you could afford to lose. Nightly is the common default and means losing up to a day. Continuous or hourly backup of a database is normal where a day's transactions matter. The frequency should be an answer to that question rather than a product default.
What is the 3-2-1 rule?
Three copies of the data, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy off site. It predates the cloud and still holds. Many providers now add a fourth element: one copy that cannot be altered or deleted, because ransomware deletes backups before it encrypts anything.
How long does a restore take?
For a few files, minutes. For a whole server over an internet connection, often days - which is why a local appliance is worth the cost for anything the business cannot run without. Ask for the figure to be calculated for your data volume and your actual line speed.
Is a backup to an external drive enough?
It is better than nothing and much worse than it feels. A drive left plugged in is encrypted along with everything else by ransomware, and a drive in the same building burns in the same fire. If it is all you have, rotate two drives and take one off site.
What is the difference between backup and disaster recovery?
Backup is having the data. Disaster recovery is being able to operate again - the hardware, the network, the licences, the procedure and the people, written down. A business can have perfect backups and still be down for a fortnight without the second part.
Backup is quoted by nearly every provider on IT Support South Africa and is usually the first thing they check on a new client's systems.
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