Every Day is World Backup Day

Backups – especially CAD file backups – are one of those mundane things that we all know we should do on a regular basis, but require a certain amount of discipline and dedication. When you lose your data due to corrupt or deleted files, hardware failures, or computer viruses, that is when you discover how good your backup strategy really is.

The Importance of Backups: A Personal Lesson

For my own personal backups, I thought I was on the ball – my laptop is automatically backed up to my NAS several times a day. However, I only ever back up my phone once or twice a year. Of course, the inevitable happens – my phone gets bricked by a software update, but at least I knew I had a backup that I could restore from. Panic over. 

Or so I thought: When I received my new phone and attempted to restore the most recent backup, I received a curt message informing me that the restore process was unsuccessful. My photos, contacts, notes – everything – gone forever!

That’s when I learned a very important lesson the hard way: a backup is only worthwhile if there is more than one copy, every copy has been tested and backups are made regularly.

What About CAD Backup Files?

So I was intrigued when I received an email from a CAD reseller about World Backup Day. They wanted to share information on how to back up my PDM vault, and other such topics as:

• SQL Standard backup routines

• Differences between one-time and scheduled backups

• How to find and manage archived data

• Options for PDM Standard and SQL Express scheduled backups

• Necessary vs. Nice-to-Have for CAD backup files

Backing up a PDM file server and SQL database is certainly complex enough, even more so if your data is replicated across multiple sites.

Backups in the Age of Cloud-Native CAD

It’s estimated that up to 30% of a company’s CAD files become corrupt or go missing over their lifetime. Therefore a medium-sized design team generating hundreds of files every day with old file-based CAD and PDM should make a backup at least once a day.

However, these backups must be run off-hours when (hopefully) no one on the design team is actively editing files, otherwise the backup may be incomplete or become corrupted. Then, if your CAD files are accidentally deleted, become corrupt due to a software crash, or are lost due to a server failure, at least you can restore your data from the most recent backup and just lose one day's worth of work. 

That could be one day's worth of work for the entire team, not to mention the time it would take to get the systems back up and running, and then restore the data from the CAD backup files. In reality, your disaster recovery plan could easily cost you several days.

A Better Way with Cloud-Native CAD & PDM

Fortunately, there is a better way. Onshape’s modern CAD & PDM system doesn’t use files, nor does it store any data locally on your computer. 

All your design data is stored in a database in a secure cloud workspace and accessed through a web browser or mobile device. That means no dedicated PDM hardware or IT infrastructure to worry about. No servers to buy, install, configure, and maintain and no backup routines to schedule. Onshape does it all for you.

Onshape's databases are replicated across multiple, geographically separated data centers. Your data is replicated in a matter of milliseconds as you work, so if something were to happen to one of the data centers, another one would take over immediately without you even noticing. 

All of Onshape’s databases are backed up every 3 hours and data is restored from these backups and subjected to integrity tests at least every 3 weeks. In addition, Onshape’s security and data protection measures are far superior to anything that any company could implement (or afford) on its own.

No More CAD Recovery Files

If you’re using Onshape, every day is World Backup Day. It’s not a special occasion.

For a more in-depth look at how Onshape secures and backs up your data – without you ever having to think about it – download the eBook “Onshape's Enterprise IT and Security Guide.” In this eBook, you’ll learn about our multi-layered, modern approach to CAD data security as well as all the additional safeguards we deploy alongside our partner, Amazon Web Services.

P.S. I’ve just made another phone backup while writing this. I suggest you do the same.