We have just lauched a micro-site with details of our LiveBackup backup and business continuity system.
If you are still using tape or disk based backup then you need to look at this. The LiveBackup system acts as an onsite backup library, backup virtual server as well as a staging platform for internet based off site or USB disk syncd backups.
It is as bullet proof a backup system we’ve seen for SMBs.
Have a look at www.shadowfaxlivebackup.com for more info.
(p.s. I just managed to overwrite a file I was working on. No problem, our LiveBackup had a copy from 15 minutes ago that I could recover.)
One of the reasons we love our Live Backup BDR (Backup and Disaster Recovery) service is that we know that our clients data is off site.
We got called to a company yesterday. Their office had been burnt to the ground by an electrical fire.
Their backups were in a fire proof safe in the office. Fire proof safes aren’t as fireproof as you might think. All their data was burnt to a crisp.
We set them up with a loan PC and a router with a 3G connection to get them back on-line (all the phone lines had been burnt out), which is something. But they have lost all of their data. They seem a resilient enough lot that I hope they will survive, and fortunately no-one was hurt in the fire, but it is going to be a stressful time for them to get back up to speed.
If you are still backing up with tape or disk, are they going off-site? Is the member of staff in charge doing it?
Time to check!
But sometimes it is important to also look at the small things. We’ve been in this situation ourselves. We’ve allocated our spare PCs to new users until we have no spare machines. Then one of the PCs fails and we have a user out of action. In our case we had the PC repairs fairly quickly (as you would hope!), but I still had a member of staff out of action for half a day.
We took the opportunity to buy new spare. The out of action staff member had this as a new PC and their old one now sits on a shelf set up and ready and waiting for the next time one of our PCs fail.
This scenario is duplicated at a lot of our clients. Even to the point where we’ve been told that they don’t want us to fix a problem on a machine, because the user needs it all the time, and can’t face being without it for a few hours whilst we work on it. A spare PC won’t be perfect, but it will keep the user running, and reduce the stress of having someone unable to get on with their work.
I write this as I try to restore the server of a client who didn’t heed the warning. Despite having a meeting about backups a few months ago, no action was taken at the time, and now their server is down. In a way they are lucky, they will not lose any data from this, but they have lost a day (and counting, not fixed it yet!) of work in the office, and I don’t know how much that has cost them.
Fortunately we did find a backup – but it was about 6 months old. This should be enough to restore their server, but if there was a current backup the server could have been restored in about half an hour, done remotely and been covered by their support contract.