More and more webmasters nowadays do not value the importance of a complete website backup (files and databases). They have left this to chance and good luck which poses a great risk to their online presence.
Can you relate to this? Then read this important article which might save you an arm and a leg later.
Web site backup is the most ignored task of the webmasters simply because it poses no immediate threat to them until something worse happen to their hosting server. Many times, this task is set aside, delayed and even regarded as nuisance to the busy website owner.
They just don't realize what is at stake here.
So before your website will be wiped out of the internet by unexpected accidents like server breakdowns, harddisk failures, hacking and DDOS attacks among other bad things, let me share with you the 10 Backup E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L-S you should not live without online.
EXPECT - Know that your webhosting company (even the biggest and the most boastful out there) may encounter problems and that your diligence to backup up will pay off later on. Online computing has never been so unpredictable that the worse of times will happen when you least expect it. With the proper mindset, you are insuring the continuity of your online endeavour in any eventualities. In short, be ready.
SCHEDULE - Your backup process should not compete with your busy schedules. Create your own backup schedule at the most convenient time for you in the week. If you're like me, I do this during lunch and dinner times. Sometimes, I have to leave my PC overnight working on the backups. If you can make it not to conflict with your busy schedules, you will be able to keep up with the demands of this job. In short, don't complicate.
STICK with it - Just do it. Patience is key to your backup tasks. Once you have a schedule, stick with it. You must do this diligently every time it should happen. This is a tough challenge especially to busy people working online. But the sooner you discipline yourself and make backing up your files a habit, the more you will benefit from a worry-free online environment. In short, get a good habit.
EVALUATE - After a while, test your backup files. A good backup can be tested by simply restoring it on another system. Evaluating your backup results from time to time is good way to know that you are keeping what you should keep - a good and working backup. In short, be sure.
NO Complacency - After some time, your backup schedule may slip away and you will tend to forget or intentionally miss it. Don't succumb to this temptation. Man has never been so busy in his lifetime like it is today in this era of the high tech trends, new developments and discoveries. In short, don't be lazy to backup.
TRASH - Know which files to keep and not to keep. You need to do this to keep your backup process as short and as efficient as possible. It also saves you valuable resources like hard disk space and backup mediums. Backup only what you need. Keep out the trash and dump it. In short, don't sweat with the trash.
INTUITION - Have faith in your backup results. Believe that what you are doing is for your own good later on. Like vitamins that keep your body healthy, backups keeps your mind away from stress and worries. A good working backup will make you smile even on the worst of times because you are insured by your patience. In short, believe in good results.
AUTOMATE - Look for alternatives to traditional backup process that can make your life simpler. There are several technologies and softwares you can use now to generate the fastest and safest backup files you will need to restore in case of emergency without you lifting a finger. Automation is king in this lazy man's world. In short, be efficient.
LIBERATE - Free yourself from worries and anxiety of theunexpected. A death sentence that can be prevented will not kill you. So think about what you can do more (like sleepingmore at night) than to think about what harm may come. With your own backup systems established, you can retire at night calmly knowing the next day, if you don't see your websites as you should, you know you can pubish it back within the day even if your webhost cannot recover it for you. In short, relax and enjoy life to the max.
SECURITY - Nothing beats the feeling of being secured. This is the reason why the insurance businesses have flourished over the years. But more importantly, your commitment to backup your files will not only save you from stress, humiliation, frustration, anger and guilt, but also lift your spirit and confidence because you know at the end of the day, your self reliance is well worth it.
And that, my friend, is a great and wonderful feeling.
Showing posts with label data backup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label data backup. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Offsite Data Backup or Online Storage, which solution is the most suited to you
Most people still think that backing up to an offsite environment is the same solution as moving files to an online storage system. If you want to know what the differences are, so you are able to make an informed decision, please read on.
Online file storage is a means for moving your digital photos, music, movies and projects off your computer via the internet to a remote storage facility, so you can access them from anywhere, share them with friends. Online file storage works by giving you and thousands of other people storage space on large internet servers. This storage is basically used as an extension to your local storage.
A typical example of use would be anybody how has non-critical data such as MP3, MPG, JPEG files who would wish to store data remotely in case of drive failure or loss and may also wish to share said files with friends. Please note this form of data storage is for file data only and would require manual transfer via ftp. Online storage is ideal for a home user looking to secure or store data offsite.
Offsite Backup is a commercial offering, originally used buy large corporate organizations who could afford high bandwidth connections ensuring their data is backed up to third party locations with highest emphasis placed upon security. As the cost of internet connectivity has greatly reduced, offsite secure backup services have become available to smaller businesses. I am sure you can appreciate, if a company, business or organization was to lose data, it would not know who its customers are, who owes money to whom, therefore creating many more challenges than a home user losing their MP3 collection would face.
It is not just an issue of moving file data to a remote location, there are many other factors a company has to address, such as:
What type of data has to be backed up – most companies will have a database in one form or another such as, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Oracle or Lotus Notes which will be running 24 hours a day. A backup solution must contain agents for backing up the databases in question whilst the database is running and must support multiple operating systems, such as Windows, Novel, Linux and Unix etc.
Security – The data to be backed up is “sensitive” and you would certainly not wish to share this data. Before data is backed up it must be encrypted to the highest levels possible, levels used by your bank or the military for example. Your data must be stored whilst still in the encrypted state ensuring only you have access.
Data Backup can create a large manpower overhead, so your offsite solution must be totally automated requiring no human intervention, set and forget.
The hardware must be dedicated for backup and resilient as possible with no single points of failure and then for good measure this whole infrastructure must be replicated in real time to a second datacenter.
All the above factors will ensure your business data is backed up and available for restore regardless of data disaster.
In summary, online storage, great for home users storing MP3, Video and file data. Offsite data backup is a must for business use.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
Online file storage is a means for moving your digital photos, music, movies and projects off your computer via the internet to a remote storage facility, so you can access them from anywhere, share them with friends. Online file storage works by giving you and thousands of other people storage space on large internet servers. This storage is basically used as an extension to your local storage.
A typical example of use would be anybody how has non-critical data such as MP3, MPG, JPEG files who would wish to store data remotely in case of drive failure or loss and may also wish to share said files with friends. Please note this form of data storage is for file data only and would require manual transfer via ftp. Online storage is ideal for a home user looking to secure or store data offsite.
Offsite Backup is a commercial offering, originally used buy large corporate organizations who could afford high bandwidth connections ensuring their data is backed up to third party locations with highest emphasis placed upon security. As the cost of internet connectivity has greatly reduced, offsite secure backup services have become available to smaller businesses. I am sure you can appreciate, if a company, business or organization was to lose data, it would not know who its customers are, who owes money to whom, therefore creating many more challenges than a home user losing their MP3 collection would face.
It is not just an issue of moving file data to a remote location, there are many other factors a company has to address, such as:
What type of data has to be backed up – most companies will have a database in one form or another such as, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Oracle or Lotus Notes which will be running 24 hours a day. A backup solution must contain agents for backing up the databases in question whilst the database is running and must support multiple operating systems, such as Windows, Novel, Linux and Unix etc.
Security – The data to be backed up is “sensitive” and you would certainly not wish to share this data. Before data is backed up it must be encrypted to the highest levels possible, levels used by your bank or the military for example. Your data must be stored whilst still in the encrypted state ensuring only you have access.
Data Backup can create a large manpower overhead, so your offsite solution must be totally automated requiring no human intervention, set and forget.
The hardware must be dedicated for backup and resilient as possible with no single points of failure and then for good measure this whole infrastructure must be replicated in real time to a second datacenter.
All the above factors will ensure your business data is backed up and available for restore regardless of data disaster.
In summary, online storage, great for home users storing MP3, Video and file data. Offsite data backup is a must for business use.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
Offsite Data Backup Exposes Potential Threats of Traditional Tape Backup
Tape backup is notorious for its inadequacy. It is unreliable, as its properties are dependable on human errors and technologically failures. Tapes are prone to mechanical, thermal and other kind of physical intervention, which can reduce their quality. The data recovery from tapes is only 60% true, as most information is lost due to the technical disadvantages. Tape backups can have slower recovery time than any other off-site backup driver. The potential threats that tapes can bring to the extraction of data is stronger than in any types of information containers. So, the next logical question to be posed here is why should rational businessmen or data admins depend on the inadequate tape systems? Offsite backup is much more reliable, faster and efficient, in comparison to the slow and old-fashioned tape backup.
Tapes have a technical annual failure in score of 1 to 12 percent. Due to this technical drawback, you should provide more tapes for containing information, as you can never be sure if they would work or would crack down. The multiple tapes that you will need for storing all the information will gradually ruin your budget, that’s why tape backup is often more expensive than offside backup, but it resumes its inadequate and slow working features nevertheless. The number of tapes that fail from either technical or administrative mistakes is estimated around 60 %. Just imagine the total budget for restoring the lost information: it will be enough to make your bankrupt!
But even more astonishingly, tape backups are still used today in many organizations, which are storing all their valuable files on mere tapes. The span that tapes are reliable is about a year: they tend to gradually decay and lose the stored information. Literally every user has experienced a tape deterioration when storing some files. Many end users are seriously disappointed when this happens to them , and start searching for other ways to protect their data. Some companies acquire daily backup regime, which is time and money consuming. Although it serves the requirements put by tape backups, it is highly stressing and can impede the daily regime of the enterprise. Tape backups are likely to have drawbacks, the same as disk . Using both methods is probably the best way to have your data protected.
Recovery procedures in the organizations cost a lot of time and money. You should think of all the things that can cause a disaster, and try to prevent them. You should either hire a security specialist, or make sure your network is protected, or even do both. A disaster recovery planning of a company can be a nerve racking experience for the new employees. The larger you organization is, the more data are likely to vanish into thin air (or network gaps). That’s’ why you should protect the system mainly from hackers , as well as from your own mistakes in file storage.
Offsite backup helps you eliminate the threats posed by ordinary tape backup. You eliminate manual intervention, thus reducing any possible human mistakes that can occur. You make everything works in an automatic and simple way, thus saving a lot of precious time for dealing with other tasks. By automating the entire process, you save installation failures, technical breaks, or property loss. Tape needs physical handling, which surely means MISTAKES: people often make mistakes when dealing with important data. By computizing the whole storing, you can easily reach the expected results, rather than shout at your managers and employers for making something wrong. This whole operation reduces the risks of malfunction up to 20 %: more than a double off the risky percent in tape backup.
Maybe the one and only advantage that tape backup has over digital stores, is that it is removable: it can be moved everywhere, and read everywhere, if you have the proper technology. This is a plus, though, it may soon become a minus: the mobility of the tape backups can also lead to someone taking over your information files. Perhaps it is better if you make an offsite backup.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
Tapes have a technical annual failure in score of 1 to 12 percent. Due to this technical drawback, you should provide more tapes for containing information, as you can never be sure if they would work or would crack down. The multiple tapes that you will need for storing all the information will gradually ruin your budget, that’s why tape backup is often more expensive than offside backup, but it resumes its inadequate and slow working features nevertheless. The number of tapes that fail from either technical or administrative mistakes is estimated around 60 %. Just imagine the total budget for restoring the lost information: it will be enough to make your bankrupt!
But even more astonishingly, tape backups are still used today in many organizations, which are storing all their valuable files on mere tapes. The span that tapes are reliable is about a year: they tend to gradually decay and lose the stored information. Literally every user has experienced a tape deterioration when storing some files. Many end users are seriously disappointed when this happens to them , and start searching for other ways to protect their data. Some companies acquire daily backup regime, which is time and money consuming. Although it serves the requirements put by tape backups, it is highly stressing and can impede the daily regime of the enterprise. Tape backups are likely to have drawbacks, the same as disk . Using both methods is probably the best way to have your data protected.
Recovery procedures in the organizations cost a lot of time and money. You should think of all the things that can cause a disaster, and try to prevent them. You should either hire a security specialist, or make sure your network is protected, or even do both. A disaster recovery planning of a company can be a nerve racking experience for the new employees. The larger you organization is, the more data are likely to vanish into thin air (or network gaps). That’s’ why you should protect the system mainly from hackers , as well as from your own mistakes in file storage.
Offsite backup helps you eliminate the threats posed by ordinary tape backup. You eliminate manual intervention, thus reducing any possible human mistakes that can occur. You make everything works in an automatic and simple way, thus saving a lot of precious time for dealing with other tasks. By automating the entire process, you save installation failures, technical breaks, or property loss. Tape needs physical handling, which surely means MISTAKES: people often make mistakes when dealing with important data. By computizing the whole storing, you can easily reach the expected results, rather than shout at your managers and employers for making something wrong. This whole operation reduces the risks of malfunction up to 20 %: more than a double off the risky percent in tape backup.
Maybe the one and only advantage that tape backup has over digital stores, is that it is removable: it can be moved everywhere, and read everywhere, if you have the proper technology. This is a plus, though, it may soon become a minus: the mobility of the tape backups can also lead to someone taking over your information files. Perhaps it is better if you make an offsite backup.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
Offsite Data Backup – Be Very careful who you deal with!
The concept of offsite data backup is not new; some time ago it was only available to corporate institutions that had multiple locations, high connectivity speeds and very high budgets. Today the cost of hardware and high speed connectivity has greatly reduced, as a result the number of companies offering backup to a remote location has greatly increased. For purposes of conversation, we can call it jumping on the band wagon.
You may think the increased competition is good for the consumer, to an extent, I agree, but not at the cost of cutting corners and jeopardising the security of your data. We all know and agree a company’s data is its most important asset, and to lose or give access to your competition such an asset is never an option. So please be careful where you store your data.
The general idea of offsite backup is a good one, after all it has a very low proportionate implementation cost and as the correct system should be completely automated the cost of ownership is also very low as well. Unlike tape backup it is also very scalable, you can start small and grow into larger solutions as and when you require with zero disruption but you have to be with the right offsite backup company in the first place.
In today’s data centric environment even smaller companies may have more than one server, just for example a server for Microsoft Exchange/Lotus Notes, a server for Microsoft SQL/Oracle/MySQL and potentially a file and print server, or maybe a single server which carries out all tasks. Smaller companies may still use older inherited Unix based or Novell based systems or may be considering migrating to a lower cost Linux environment. Whet ever you currently use or what you may use in the future your offsite backup solution will need to adapt. Please check, what ever backup company you use, make sure they are always developing their products for the future, your companies future.
Getting data to an offsite location is the easy bit, anybody can click and drag to an ftp site, to optimise your backup and more importantly your recovery times make sure your data is compressed locally or at source. The most important element of any data transfer is security, make sure your data is encrypted before it is transmitted and remains encrypted whilst in storage if this is the case only your organisation will have access to your data.
In what environment is your data stored? There is no point just moving your most important asset to another location, make sure it is totally safe, data should only be backed up to a class 1 data centre with the highest security and safety measures in place, hardware should be clustered so there is no single point of failure within that data centre and for added security and peace of mind the whole data centre and hardware within should be a replicated in real time to a second location in preferably another country.
Imagine your local data backed up every night or when ever you wish to a secure remote location in the UK and then replicated in real-time to a second data centre in a different country.
Finally this whole process must be as efficient as possible. It must be totally secure, fully automated ensuring your staff are focussed on revenue generating functions, it must support open files enabling you to backup regardless of what your systems are doing and it must be capable of incremental backups, after all there is no point re-transmitting a file which has not been accessed for a year.
So after reading this article I now hope it has made you think and understand why the cheapest offsite backup solution is rarely the best.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
You may think the increased competition is good for the consumer, to an extent, I agree, but not at the cost of cutting corners and jeopardising the security of your data. We all know and agree a company’s data is its most important asset, and to lose or give access to your competition such an asset is never an option. So please be careful where you store your data.
The general idea of offsite backup is a good one, after all it has a very low proportionate implementation cost and as the correct system should be completely automated the cost of ownership is also very low as well. Unlike tape backup it is also very scalable, you can start small and grow into larger solutions as and when you require with zero disruption but you have to be with the right offsite backup company in the first place.
In today’s data centric environment even smaller companies may have more than one server, just for example a server for Microsoft Exchange/Lotus Notes, a server for Microsoft SQL/Oracle/MySQL and potentially a file and print server, or maybe a single server which carries out all tasks. Smaller companies may still use older inherited Unix based or Novell based systems or may be considering migrating to a lower cost Linux environment. Whet ever you currently use or what you may use in the future your offsite backup solution will need to adapt. Please check, what ever backup company you use, make sure they are always developing their products for the future, your companies future.
Getting data to an offsite location is the easy bit, anybody can click and drag to an ftp site, to optimise your backup and more importantly your recovery times make sure your data is compressed locally or at source. The most important element of any data transfer is security, make sure your data is encrypted before it is transmitted and remains encrypted whilst in storage if this is the case only your organisation will have access to your data.
In what environment is your data stored? There is no point just moving your most important asset to another location, make sure it is totally safe, data should only be backed up to a class 1 data centre with the highest security and safety measures in place, hardware should be clustered so there is no single point of failure within that data centre and for added security and peace of mind the whole data centre and hardware within should be a replicated in real time to a second location in preferably another country.
Imagine your local data backed up every night or when ever you wish to a secure remote location in the UK and then replicated in real-time to a second data centre in a different country.
Finally this whole process must be as efficient as possible. It must be totally secure, fully automated ensuring your staff are focussed on revenue generating functions, it must support open files enabling you to backup regardless of what your systems are doing and it must be capable of incremental backups, after all there is no point re-transmitting a file which has not been accessed for a year.
So after reading this article I now hope it has made you think and understand why the cheapest offsite backup solution is rarely the best.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
If your hard disk crashes, is your data covered by any warranty?
Copyright 2006 Per Strandberg
This was a question that was recently put by forward on a TV consumer show. One guy had his hard disk crashed and lost all data. He was able to get his hard disk replaced because of a warranty.
To retrieve the data he had it sent to a data recovery company to get it recovered. The price tag was about $ 1500. But, he also wanted to have that extra cost covered by the same warranty.
I’m not a lawyer, but I believe it is quite clear that any warranty from any hard disk manufacturer doesn’t include restoration of data. That said, with the long life time and high durability of today’s hard disks they could very well afford this when it is caused by a hard disk failure.
As long as the hard disk only have a mechanical or electronic fault and it have not been exposed to water or fire the track record for restoring the data by a professional data recovery company is quite good. However, you have to expect to pay a chunk of money to have it restored. And you can never be 100 % sure they will succeed.
It’s always worthwhile to backup all your data or at least backup the data that is most important for you. This is the best warranty against data loss.
If you use the computer for leisure, playing games or surfing the Internet you may not need to take any backup at all. But today, more and more people store important document and information on their computers. Some store data vital to their professional life. This can be years of work such as academic thesis or it can be the content for a new book they are writing. Most people store at least some important information such as address books, emails, text documents, family pictures, music or company records.
Should you take backup? If so, what type of backup is best for you?
This all depends on: The value of the data if it becomes lost. The time it will take to recreate lost data. The cost to make the backup.
In most cases the data you need to backup are limited to specific files or folders. If that is the case you don’t need to backup the complete hard drive and the cost to make backup is reduced. If you only need to backup documents, emails and address books then there are many cheaper alternatives including USB flash memory keys, online backup or backup to CD’s/DVD’s.
If you install important software from Internet then you need to take a full backup of the hard disk at least once. This is because nearly all software programs store system related information in what is called the reg keys deep in the operating system which must be backed up on a full backup.
As an alternative, make sure that you save the installation files and any accompanied software registration keys in one specific folder after you have downloaded the software. If you do this and include the folder in one of your regular smaller backup, then you are capable to recreate it.
If you get a hard disk crash and you want to minimize the downtime and you don’t want the hassle to install the operating system and all the software’s you have on installation CD’s. If that is the case then you should consider making a disk image backup.
This is a backup of the complete disk drive. Included in the disk image software is a boot utility. From it you can create boot diskettes or boot CD's.
Thus, if you hard disk crashes you first install a new hard disk. Next you boot up from your diskette or CD. From the boot program you are then able to create your disk image directly on the new hard disk. So by doing this type of restoration you don’t have to install the operating system and all you other programs from any installation CD’s. This saves you time.
This was a question that was recently put by forward on a TV consumer show. One guy had his hard disk crashed and lost all data. He was able to get his hard disk replaced because of a warranty.
To retrieve the data he had it sent to a data recovery company to get it recovered. The price tag was about $ 1500. But, he also wanted to have that extra cost covered by the same warranty.
I’m not a lawyer, but I believe it is quite clear that any warranty from any hard disk manufacturer doesn’t include restoration of data. That said, with the long life time and high durability of today’s hard disks they could very well afford this when it is caused by a hard disk failure.
As long as the hard disk only have a mechanical or electronic fault and it have not been exposed to water or fire the track record for restoring the data by a professional data recovery company is quite good. However, you have to expect to pay a chunk of money to have it restored. And you can never be 100 % sure they will succeed.
It’s always worthwhile to backup all your data or at least backup the data that is most important for you. This is the best warranty against data loss.
If you use the computer for leisure, playing games or surfing the Internet you may not need to take any backup at all. But today, more and more people store important document and information on their computers. Some store data vital to their professional life. This can be years of work such as academic thesis or it can be the content for a new book they are writing. Most people store at least some important information such as address books, emails, text documents, family pictures, music or company records.
Should you take backup? If so, what type of backup is best for you?
This all depends on: The value of the data if it becomes lost. The time it will take to recreate lost data. The cost to make the backup.
In most cases the data you need to backup are limited to specific files or folders. If that is the case you don’t need to backup the complete hard drive and the cost to make backup is reduced. If you only need to backup documents, emails and address books then there are many cheaper alternatives including USB flash memory keys, online backup or backup to CD’s/DVD’s.
If you install important software from Internet then you need to take a full backup of the hard disk at least once. This is because nearly all software programs store system related information in what is called the reg keys deep in the operating system which must be backed up on a full backup.
As an alternative, make sure that you save the installation files and any accompanied software registration keys in one specific folder after you have downloaded the software. If you do this and include the folder in one of your regular smaller backup, then you are capable to recreate it.
If you get a hard disk crash and you want to minimize the downtime and you don’t want the hassle to install the operating system and all the software’s you have on installation CD’s. If that is the case then you should consider making a disk image backup.
This is a backup of the complete disk drive. Included in the disk image software is a boot utility. From it you can create boot diskettes or boot CD's.
Thus, if you hard disk crashes you first install a new hard disk. Next you boot up from your diskette or CD. From the boot program you are then able to create your disk image directly on the new hard disk. So by doing this type of restoration you don’t have to install the operating system and all you other programs from any installation CD’s. This saves you time.
How on Earth do Companies and Organisations lose Data?
Browsing the web I became engrossed with the concept of data backup and data loss. There is almost an almost unlimited amount of information covering subjects such as how to keep computer and server data secure, how to back-up data, how to restore data, how to replicate data, who will remove your backup tapes to an remote location, which companies can restore data from corrupt disks. With all this information and data technology available I keep asking myself the same question over and over again, how and why is data terminally lost?
Much information on one web site does tend to contradict information on another site, but after all, most companies with sites of this nature are trying to sell you their solution so you will never get an overall unbiased picture, but there is one underlying fact which we can not get away from, a fact that is stated on most sites and the following fact that I totally agree with is, “Data is the lifeline of all companies and organisations; if data is terminally lost then the chances of a company trading efficiently or even surviving after 2 years of the disaster not at all good”. There are various statistics relating to this fact, but it is accepted that 50% to 70% of companies will go out of business within 1 year if data is lost. It is also acknowledged that everything within a business can be replaced, desks, chairs, buildings, even people can be replaced, everything but the data. Imagine, you sit on a chair and it breaks, you buy another one, you get the picture but imagine the consequences of data loss, you don’t know who your customers are, you don’t know who owes you money, you don’t know who you owe money to, you don’t know what orders you have to ship or who you are supposed to be visiting. Dire times are ahead.
Taking all of the above into account I go back to the original question, if people, companies or organisations understand the true value and importance of their data, how do they manage to lose it? Data loss is totally unnecessary and unacceptable! I honestly feel most IT administrators do have the best intentions when it comes the preservation of data. In my experience data loss stems from only a few sources, human error, lack of resource or lack of planning. Total data loss should never occur when hardware fails.
Human error – I forgot to take the tapes offsite when fire or flood struck offsite tape removal company incorrectly labelled your tapes, I did not test the tape prior to backup and consequently my data was not backed up, I forgot to backup! I did not put my tapes in a secure safe and they were stolen overnight. My backup server crashed in the middle of a backup. The web is littered with stories like this; they are almost a comedy of errors. Responsibility for data backup cannot ever be placed upon the shoulders of one person or one team of people, if there is room for human error, then you have a flaw within you backup system.
Lack of resources – If you work for a corporate, your backup and restore system will have probably cost many hundreds of thousands of pounds. You will enjoy an automated disk to disk system replicated to a second remote location. Even though you are replicating to an offsite location, for added security, you will most likely use this second site to backup to tape. This replicated infrastructure is way out of budget for small to medium enterprises backup to tape is still not a cheap task, by the time you have purchased a tape drive, server to fit the drive into, tape media and the backup software you will have spent at least £3,000, plus backing up to tape in the conventional way is still prone to the same potential human errors. The humans that make the error also have to be paid, if a backup solution is not automated then you will have to employ someone to take care of this, I would prefer my staff to be carrying out more proactive, revenue generating tasks.
Lack of planning – probably a harsh way of putting it, a lack of understanding potential disasters may sound more forgiving. It all amounts to the same thing, but a lack of planning was recently highlighted in the UK when the Bunsfield oil terminal exploded. Companies who backed up to tape and secured said tapes in a fire and water proof safe were cruelly exposed when their building collapsed as a result of the explosion, backup tapes could not be recovered for weeks as they were in the safe under hundreds of tonnes of rubble. Their ability to trade was rendered impossible. Most companies feel that this situation will never happen to them, but let’s put this situation into context, Bunsfield is only the fifth largest and one of over 40 oil terminals and depots in the UK all of which are near major towns and cities, so it could happen to you. This case is one of many where buildings have been destroyed and data has been lost as a result.
If you are still with me you will notice I have only mentioned reasons for and ways of losing data. The rapid growth of cheap high speed internet connectivity and consequently the greatly reduced cost of highly secure, fully automated offsite backup solutions is the reason I ask “how can companies and organisations lose data?”
Offsite backup, also known as remote backup, online backup, is a solution that ticks all the boxes for a small to medium companies with limited budget and resource. Why is this the case I hear you ask? If you deal with a reputable company, remote online backup is cost effective, solutions start at around £25 per month, totally automated therefore requires no human intervention resulting in no human error and your data will always be available as it will be replicated between two data centres. To summarise you have an enterprise class backup solution at your disposal for less than the cost of a low end tape drive.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
Much information on one web site does tend to contradict information on another site, but after all, most companies with sites of this nature are trying to sell you their solution so you will never get an overall unbiased picture, but there is one underlying fact which we can not get away from, a fact that is stated on most sites and the following fact that I totally agree with is, “Data is the lifeline of all companies and organisations; if data is terminally lost then the chances of a company trading efficiently or even surviving after 2 years of the disaster not at all good”. There are various statistics relating to this fact, but it is accepted that 50% to 70% of companies will go out of business within 1 year if data is lost. It is also acknowledged that everything within a business can be replaced, desks, chairs, buildings, even people can be replaced, everything but the data. Imagine, you sit on a chair and it breaks, you buy another one, you get the picture but imagine the consequences of data loss, you don’t know who your customers are, you don’t know who owes you money, you don’t know who you owe money to, you don’t know what orders you have to ship or who you are supposed to be visiting. Dire times are ahead.
Taking all of the above into account I go back to the original question, if people, companies or organisations understand the true value and importance of their data, how do they manage to lose it? Data loss is totally unnecessary and unacceptable! I honestly feel most IT administrators do have the best intentions when it comes the preservation of data. In my experience data loss stems from only a few sources, human error, lack of resource or lack of planning. Total data loss should never occur when hardware fails.
Human error – I forgot to take the tapes offsite when fire or flood struck offsite tape removal company incorrectly labelled your tapes, I did not test the tape prior to backup and consequently my data was not backed up, I forgot to backup! I did not put my tapes in a secure safe and they were stolen overnight. My backup server crashed in the middle of a backup. The web is littered with stories like this; they are almost a comedy of errors. Responsibility for data backup cannot ever be placed upon the shoulders of one person or one team of people, if there is room for human error, then you have a flaw within you backup system.
Lack of resources – If you work for a corporate, your backup and restore system will have probably cost many hundreds of thousands of pounds. You will enjoy an automated disk to disk system replicated to a second remote location. Even though you are replicating to an offsite location, for added security, you will most likely use this second site to backup to tape. This replicated infrastructure is way out of budget for small to medium enterprises backup to tape is still not a cheap task, by the time you have purchased a tape drive, server to fit the drive into, tape media and the backup software you will have spent at least £3,000, plus backing up to tape in the conventional way is still prone to the same potential human errors. The humans that make the error also have to be paid, if a backup solution is not automated then you will have to employ someone to take care of this, I would prefer my staff to be carrying out more proactive, revenue generating tasks.
Lack of planning – probably a harsh way of putting it, a lack of understanding potential disasters may sound more forgiving. It all amounts to the same thing, but a lack of planning was recently highlighted in the UK when the Bunsfield oil terminal exploded. Companies who backed up to tape and secured said tapes in a fire and water proof safe were cruelly exposed when their building collapsed as a result of the explosion, backup tapes could not be recovered for weeks as they were in the safe under hundreds of tonnes of rubble. Their ability to trade was rendered impossible. Most companies feel that this situation will never happen to them, but let’s put this situation into context, Bunsfield is only the fifth largest and one of over 40 oil terminals and depots in the UK all of which are near major towns and cities, so it could happen to you. This case is one of many where buildings have been destroyed and data has been lost as a result.
If you are still with me you will notice I have only mentioned reasons for and ways of losing data. The rapid growth of cheap high speed internet connectivity and consequently the greatly reduced cost of highly secure, fully automated offsite backup solutions is the reason I ask “how can companies and organisations lose data?”
Offsite backup, also known as remote backup, online backup, is a solution that ticks all the boxes for a small to medium companies with limited budget and resource. Why is this the case I hear you ask? If you deal with a reputable company, remote online backup is cost effective, solutions start at around £25 per month, totally automated therefore requires no human intervention resulting in no human error and your data will always be available as it will be replicated between two data centres. To summarise you have an enterprise class backup solution at your disposal for less than the cost of a low end tape drive.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
Data Backup - Do you have a backup and data recovery plan in place
Data backup is rarely a part of a home computer user’s or business IT administrator’s plans, we all say it will never happen to me or my company, but in reality we are just mentally preparing for the time we lose our data. Its like trying to stop smoking, we all know we should do it but will find every excuse not to. So be honest with yourself and ask yourself the question, do you have a backup plan for your data, or more importantly, do you have a restore plan which will protect your business should something go wrong? All business leaders and owners will now tell you that computers are way past being a useful part of our lives, but now they are an absolute necessity. We acknowledge the data which resides on our computer infrastructure is the most important asset of any organization. I ask again, what would happen if you lost your data and what are you doing to protect it?
The reasons for data loss are endless, human intervention, hardware failure, software failure, natural disaster, loss, theft, we can go on, but we can be sure of one thing, as time goes by the list will get longer and longer.
Ever had anything stolen or lost anything before?
I have been in the IT industry for some 25 years now, and as you can imagine, I have heard some bizarre stories of how computers and servers have been stolen. Laptops stolen from back seats of cars (data lost), a colleague forgot he left his laptop on the roof of his car; problem is he realized when he was 160 miles down the road (lost data). My friend’s office was broken in twice in two nights, first time resulted in loss of desktop computers and totally trashed alarm system (some data loss), and second night was to take the servers along with the backup device and media! Apparently the heavy stuff was stolen the second night as the thief’s had more time due to the alarm not being repaired quickly enough (total data loss and company ceased trading within 8 months). Save yourself money; prevent data loss in the first place by implementing a data backup plan.
Hardware Failure
If you have managed to never lose your laptop or have you whole IT infrastructure stolen then well done, so now let’s prepare ourselves for hardware failure. There are mainly only three mechanical parts within a laptop, computer or server; 1) hard drive, 2) backup drive 3) CD or DVD. Hard drives do fail and if it has not happen yet it will. Don’t get me wrong, if you take a failed drive to an expert, they will probably get most of your data back (phew) but expect to pay in excess of £5000 for the pleasure (not phew). Save yourself money; prevent data loss in the first place by implementing a data backup plan.
Fire or Disaster (natural or not).
I live in the UK, it’s a lovely place as we don’t have issues with forest fires, earth quakes, and hurricanes etc. so there will never be any large natural disaster which will wipe out the majority of a city. This is what I thought until the Bunsfield oil refinery blew up and flattened everything within a 3 mile radius. There are a million and one reasons and scenarios I can give you illustrating why you should backup your business data. We all know the practice of data backup is nothing more than good common sense. Mission critical or sensitive data you don't want or can not afford to lose should be secured. PROTECT YOUR DATA! If you honestly think you do not need to backup your data because you will never lose it, please stop reading this article now and go and do something less boring.
Let’s talk about the various ways of securing your data and other backup services. If you take the following on board you will be able to find the solution which will best suit you or your company.
Backup to CD solution.
To backup your file data to CD is easy, it may be time consuming to do this every night and you will have to be disciplined to put up to an hour aside to carry out this task every night. To backup data to a CD drive is not an automated process and we all know people get busy. Once you have backed your data to CD please always verify that the data is actually on the CD and then take it home with you. There is no point leaving it to be stolen or destroyed by fire along with your hardware.
Please do not us a CD to archive data (safe documents for a long time) as I would not expect this form of media to remain stable for more than 2 years.
Backing up to CD has many limitations but it is certainly better than not backing up your data at all.
RAID – Not backup but will protect your server disks.
All servers should be given every opportunity to stay alive, running a RAID configuration will help prevent data loss due to hard drive failure. If you have 3 drives running in a RAID 5 configuration, your server will tolerate a single drive failure. RAID will not protect you from fire, flood, theft or any other disaster waiting to happen, but does offer business continuity.
This solution doesn't usually protect you from theft as the extra hard drives for RAID storage are usually installed in your computer or in other equipment on site. It usually won't protect you from fire either so this method does have its limitations.
Secure Offsite Data Backup and Recovery via a third party organization.
Offsite Backup or Backing up via the Internet methods are usually associated with larger enterprise companies. In the past the high cost of high speed connectivity has been prohibitive to smaller companies.
This method of data backup is now become totally accepted and is gaining momentum around the globe. The main reason for such grown is because the price of high speed internet connections has greatly reduced, virtually every business and home is connected to the internet via a minimum 2MB pipe as a result it is now possible to backup high volumes of data to a secure offsite data centre.
For me, the best element of an offsite backup solution is not the high encryption security levels in place, the price or the purpose designed replicated infrastructure where your data is stored, but it is the fact that an offsite backup solution is a totally automated process. Set and forget, once you have set the software to backup your data at a certain time of every day you can just forget it and let it get on with its job of protecting your data.
If I controlled your backup process, I would implement all three of the options mentioned. A RAID system for business continuity, offsite backup to securely protect all my business data, and to enable a quick restore, a CD backup of just my mission critical data which will keep my business running.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
The reasons for data loss are endless, human intervention, hardware failure, software failure, natural disaster, loss, theft, we can go on, but we can be sure of one thing, as time goes by the list will get longer and longer.
Ever had anything stolen or lost anything before?
I have been in the IT industry for some 25 years now, and as you can imagine, I have heard some bizarre stories of how computers and servers have been stolen. Laptops stolen from back seats of cars (data lost), a colleague forgot he left his laptop on the roof of his car; problem is he realized when he was 160 miles down the road (lost data). My friend’s office was broken in twice in two nights, first time resulted in loss of desktop computers and totally trashed alarm system (some data loss), and second night was to take the servers along with the backup device and media! Apparently the heavy stuff was stolen the second night as the thief’s had more time due to the alarm not being repaired quickly enough (total data loss and company ceased trading within 8 months). Save yourself money; prevent data loss in the first place by implementing a data backup plan.
Hardware Failure
If you have managed to never lose your laptop or have you whole IT infrastructure stolen then well done, so now let’s prepare ourselves for hardware failure. There are mainly only three mechanical parts within a laptop, computer or server; 1) hard drive, 2) backup drive 3) CD or DVD. Hard drives do fail and if it has not happen yet it will. Don’t get me wrong, if you take a failed drive to an expert, they will probably get most of your data back (phew) but expect to pay in excess of £5000 for the pleasure (not phew). Save yourself money; prevent data loss in the first place by implementing a data backup plan.
Fire or Disaster (natural or not).
I live in the UK, it’s a lovely place as we don’t have issues with forest fires, earth quakes, and hurricanes etc. so there will never be any large natural disaster which will wipe out the majority of a city. This is what I thought until the Bunsfield oil refinery blew up and flattened everything within a 3 mile radius. There are a million and one reasons and scenarios I can give you illustrating why you should backup your business data. We all know the practice of data backup is nothing more than good common sense. Mission critical or sensitive data you don't want or can not afford to lose should be secured. PROTECT YOUR DATA! If you honestly think you do not need to backup your data because you will never lose it, please stop reading this article now and go and do something less boring.
Let’s talk about the various ways of securing your data and other backup services. If you take the following on board you will be able to find the solution which will best suit you or your company.
Backup to CD solution.
To backup your file data to CD is easy, it may be time consuming to do this every night and you will have to be disciplined to put up to an hour aside to carry out this task every night. To backup data to a CD drive is not an automated process and we all know people get busy. Once you have backed your data to CD please always verify that the data is actually on the CD and then take it home with you. There is no point leaving it to be stolen or destroyed by fire along with your hardware.
Please do not us a CD to archive data (safe documents for a long time) as I would not expect this form of media to remain stable for more than 2 years.
Backing up to CD has many limitations but it is certainly better than not backing up your data at all.
RAID – Not backup but will protect your server disks.
All servers should be given every opportunity to stay alive, running a RAID configuration will help prevent data loss due to hard drive failure. If you have 3 drives running in a RAID 5 configuration, your server will tolerate a single drive failure. RAID will not protect you from fire, flood, theft or any other disaster waiting to happen, but does offer business continuity.
This solution doesn't usually protect you from theft as the extra hard drives for RAID storage are usually installed in your computer or in other equipment on site. It usually won't protect you from fire either so this method does have its limitations.
Secure Offsite Data Backup and Recovery via a third party organization.
Offsite Backup or Backing up via the Internet methods are usually associated with larger enterprise companies. In the past the high cost of high speed connectivity has been prohibitive to smaller companies.
This method of data backup is now become totally accepted and is gaining momentum around the globe. The main reason for such grown is because the price of high speed internet connections has greatly reduced, virtually every business and home is connected to the internet via a minimum 2MB pipe as a result it is now possible to backup high volumes of data to a secure offsite data centre.
For me, the best element of an offsite backup solution is not the high encryption security levels in place, the price or the purpose designed replicated infrastructure where your data is stored, but it is the fact that an offsite backup solution is a totally automated process. Set and forget, once you have set the software to backup your data at a certain time of every day you can just forget it and let it get on with its job of protecting your data.
If I controlled your backup process, I would implement all three of the options mentioned. A RAID system for business continuity, offsite backup to securely protect all my business data, and to enable a quick restore, a CD backup of just my mission critical data which will keep my business running.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
Companies must be prepared for data storage and backup compliance
Companies must account and deal for new legislation governing how information is stored on IT systems.
The EU is shortly to adopt many of the recommendations on corporate governance set out by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US, UK firms are to be expected to deal with and manage explicit guidelines on how to store email and other documents on their IT systems. IT managers should consider the necessary procedures and technologies needed for compliance now, in order ensure technology is able to deal with the new legislation.
Regulations regarding data storage at the moment are fairly lax, but there will be a huge increase in the amount of data than must be held over the next 18 months to two years.
Email archiving, the increased use of expencive write-once read-many media, information lifecycle management and content-aware storage as a few of the technologies which firms should consider for the future, though in some cases companies will simply need to improve the way they manage existing systems.
It is anticipated that new legislations will demand that an organizations’ archiving solutions must guarantee that the information they hold has not been changed, and keep it for a specific period of time before automatically deleting it.
A survey of 493 companies in the UK has shown that compliance with regulations has a high or fairly significant impact on the data storage strategies of 87% of the organisations surveyed. Back-up and recovery was also very important to the data protection strategy of 93% of organisations.
78% of organisations future storage strategy is set to include Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape technology. This may be due to the highly affordable and flexible nature of this new technology. For example, recent deployments of disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) solutions by various companies have, on average, reduced the backup window by more than 70%, from fifteen hours to less than four, yielding significant time and cost savings in tape management.
Interestingly, product features were far more important than the brand of the product, with 82% of organisations making a decision based on product features. When it came to the decision of choosing a specialist storage supplier or a general IT provider for storage solutions there was a very slight preference for specialised storage suppliers (51%) over general IT providers (49%).
This survey shows that compliance with regulations is a key driver in companies' storage security policy and that we are likely to see more companies deploying Disk to Disk to Tape technology in the future.
All the above is fine if you are a corporate, you have an annual IT budget of £500,000 and numerous members of staff who can plan and complete such a system. Is it very easy to talk about SANs, NAS’s Virtual Tape Libaries. Organisations of this nature already have a very stable and flexible infrastructure, where it is comparably easier to implement such a system.
What about the 1000’s of smaller companies such as solicitors, accountants, medical practices and manufactures etc, which may have only 2 servers on site, but still have the same reliance on data and have to adhere to the same legislations? Backup to tape is an option, however, there is an upfront cost and a requirement for a trusted member of staff to take the tapes off site every night and store in a safe place. Can you guarantee your backup has worked, and do you really trust your long term data on magnetic media? Another option is to archive your data onto optical devices, however the cost is even more prohibitive than tape and you still need to take the disk offsite.
No doubt your data is growing quickly; recently enforced legislations makes sure of this, so why not employ a backup and archival solution which has no upfront cost, is fully automated, secure and regardless of disaster will ensure your data is always available, Offsite Backup.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
The EU is shortly to adopt many of the recommendations on corporate governance set out by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US, UK firms are to be expected to deal with and manage explicit guidelines on how to store email and other documents on their IT systems. IT managers should consider the necessary procedures and technologies needed for compliance now, in order ensure technology is able to deal with the new legislation.
Regulations regarding data storage at the moment are fairly lax, but there will be a huge increase in the amount of data than must be held over the next 18 months to two years.
Email archiving, the increased use of expencive write-once read-many media, information lifecycle management and content-aware storage as a few of the technologies which firms should consider for the future, though in some cases companies will simply need to improve the way they manage existing systems.
It is anticipated that new legislations will demand that an organizations’ archiving solutions must guarantee that the information they hold has not been changed, and keep it for a specific period of time before automatically deleting it.
A survey of 493 companies in the UK has shown that compliance with regulations has a high or fairly significant impact on the data storage strategies of 87% of the organisations surveyed. Back-up and recovery was also very important to the data protection strategy of 93% of organisations.
78% of organisations future storage strategy is set to include Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape technology. This may be due to the highly affordable and flexible nature of this new technology. For example, recent deployments of disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) solutions by various companies have, on average, reduced the backup window by more than 70%, from fifteen hours to less than four, yielding significant time and cost savings in tape management.
Interestingly, product features were far more important than the brand of the product, with 82% of organisations making a decision based on product features. When it came to the decision of choosing a specialist storage supplier or a general IT provider for storage solutions there was a very slight preference for specialised storage suppliers (51%) over general IT providers (49%).
This survey shows that compliance with regulations is a key driver in companies' storage security policy and that we are likely to see more companies deploying Disk to Disk to Tape technology in the future.
All the above is fine if you are a corporate, you have an annual IT budget of £500,000 and numerous members of staff who can plan and complete such a system. Is it very easy to talk about SANs, NAS’s Virtual Tape Libaries. Organisations of this nature already have a very stable and flexible infrastructure, where it is comparably easier to implement such a system.
What about the 1000’s of smaller companies such as solicitors, accountants, medical practices and manufactures etc, which may have only 2 servers on site, but still have the same reliance on data and have to adhere to the same legislations? Backup to tape is an option, however, there is an upfront cost and a requirement for a trusted member of staff to take the tapes off site every night and store in a safe place. Can you guarantee your backup has worked, and do you really trust your long term data on magnetic media? Another option is to archive your data onto optical devices, however the cost is even more prohibitive than tape and you still need to take the disk offsite.
No doubt your data is growing quickly; recently enforced legislations makes sure of this, so why not employ a backup and archival solution which has no upfront cost, is fully automated, secure and regardless of disaster will ensure your data is always available, Offsite Backup.
To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit
www.perfectbackup.co.uk
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