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
Showing posts with label online backup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online backup. Show all posts
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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
Offsite Backup
If your business works on critical databases that are too important to lose, offsite backup technology can save it safely on remote places. This means complete safety of your data from local calamities, fires, and other natural factors that can corrupt or destroy your valuable database.
Go For Professional Offsite Backup
The business world runs on information and data – customer profiles, reports, charts, analyses, accounting reports, or documents and files that store text, audio, and video in various formats. This valuable data needs to be backed up in case there is a local eventuality such as power breakdowns, fires, and system failures that corrupt and destroy database files.
An offsite backup service works as follows. Client’s data is first encrypted, compressed, and then transmitted to an offsite high-security data center. The storage is done using mirrored RAID servers. Data retrieval can be done during any emergency using either Internet or other data restore lines. Added Features of Offsite Backup
An offsite backup service run professionally can include the following services – client account management, support over telephone, linked accounts billing, large storage capacities running into terabytes, central management for multiple locations, and backing up of both email and normal databases. What can Offsite Backup deliver to you?
Apart from ensuring your data is safe and secure at an offsite location, a well managed offsite backup service can offer the following advantages –
• Automated backup operations.
• Cross Platform Technology – No matter what system you run: Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc.
• Data Encrypted Network Connections – For complete confidentiality of your business data.
• Web Interface – Manage backup histories and preferences with convenience.
Global Data Vault can provide you with information and access to various offsite backup services, online backup solutions, new backup services, sql replication solutions, and other backup solutions to meet all your business requirements.
Go For Professional Offsite Backup
The business world runs on information and data – customer profiles, reports, charts, analyses, accounting reports, or documents and files that store text, audio, and video in various formats. This valuable data needs to be backed up in case there is a local eventuality such as power breakdowns, fires, and system failures that corrupt and destroy database files.
An offsite backup service works as follows. Client’s data is first encrypted, compressed, and then transmitted to an offsite high-security data center. The storage is done using mirrored RAID servers. Data retrieval can be done during any emergency using either Internet or other data restore lines. Added Features of Offsite Backup
An offsite backup service run professionally can include the following services – client account management, support over telephone, linked accounts billing, large storage capacities running into terabytes, central management for multiple locations, and backing up of both email and normal databases. What can Offsite Backup deliver to you?
Apart from ensuring your data is safe and secure at an offsite location, a well managed offsite backup service can offer the following advantages –
• Automated backup operations.
• Cross Platform Technology – No matter what system you run: Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc.
• Data Encrypted Network Connections – For complete confidentiality of your business data.
• Web Interface – Manage backup histories and preferences with convenience.
Global Data Vault can provide you with information and access to various offsite backup services, online backup solutions, new backup services, sql replication solutions, and other backup solutions to meet all your business requirements.
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
