Backups are only as good as the ability to restore them, successfully.  At times they have a tendency to be forgotten.  Without good monitoring or testing we are not able to have the peace of mind that our data is safe.  In some environments backups are tested monthly when one or more users 'accidentally' delete an important file.  In other cases backups go months, if not years without testing.  There are even cases in which a good backup has not run for weeks and no one is the wiser. 

If you are not monitoring your backups, please start today.  Windows Small Business Server has built-in alerting and monitoring features that let you know when your backups fail or succeed.  Most third-party tools have an email alerting feature built in.  Windows native backup tool reports on its backup and places the log file in your %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup folder.  An admin can keep a shortcut on their desktop that folder and review it daily. 

Try to test your backups every so often.  The more critical the need to recover the more often you should check the data.  Plan on restoring several critical files to an alternate location once a month.  Verify that the files were restored successfully.  Now you can feel at ease.

The other item to consider is off-site storage of these backups.  I recommend that you keep some type of backup off-site.  This could be a copy of your daily, weekly or monthly.  There are several ways to accomplish this.  Next week I will expand on this and talk about some of the different services available.