Archive for the ‘Backup Strategy’ Category
A Good Backup System:
Last week we looked at some common misconceptions with backups. This week we look at how we can implement a good backup system?
There are thousands of articles out on how to implement a good backup system and I am sure they all give great advice. What is most important is that you implement something that you can manage without it stressing you out of giving you too much manual work to do (that you will eventually give up on). Best thing to do is to start somewhere, then read some more and improve what you are doing. Being in control is the most important thing.
Types of backups
If you have your data on discs and CD drives stop being available, then how do you access your data? Or, what if all your data is on BluRay discs and your BluRay drive fails? You won’t be able to access that data until you replace your BluRay drive.
A good rule of thumb here is to make sure that you have backups on different types of media – keep some backups on DVD’s and others on external hard drives or online with an online backup system (like Carbonite of course).
You are obviously not going to be able to do this for every single file that requires backing up. It is however important that you do it for the really critical files (e.g. legal documents, accounting records, important pics, home contents database for insurance use). Having all of this data available in a variety of forms is really in your best interest.
Location of backups
I have often written and even tweeted about the risk of relying purely on external drives. They are certainly worth while having and with the prices of TB drives falling to under $200, why wouldn’t you invest in one or even more than one (I have one at home). So sitting beside your computer is a nice little pile of external hard drives that hold all your backups. Now what happens if your home (or office) burns down or gets burgled? Not only are you very likely to lose your computer, you will also lose all of your backups as well.
I have a blog post from a few months back where a shop had two laptops stolen in seconds. All of the data went with the laptops.
If all your backups are in one place, and it’s the same place as your computer, this is not a great backup strategy. A good backup strategy would be to have at least one of your backups somewhere else. So in case of a fire, burglary or some other disaster, all of your backups will not be at risk.
This same principle applies to media types as well. No good have the CDs and the hard drives all sitting under your desk. If you can’t move them to outside of the house of office, then at least keep them in separate rooms. Obviously this is where online backup can play a big role, as its remote. In the cloud is as remote as you can get I suppose.
Number of backups
This next rule is about keeping a master backup. What happens if you’re part way through a backup to an external hard drive and it fails? Or you think it has completed and nothing has actually been transferred and you don’t notice? Should this happen to you, although you may think you now have 2 sets of backups, you really only have one. Rule of thumb is that you should never overwrite your only backup in case something goes wrong.
What software
There are lots of online backup providers available today and luckily enough they are all very affordable. I suggest you trial a few and see how easy they are to backup your files as well as restore them. Compare prices and what other features they have eg online access to your files or even the ability to have one account across PC and Mac and even Linux if you use it. The more flexible the better but be sure to also pick a system on its usability. Having every feature under the sun isn’t everything.
Carbonite is great because it is automated and very user friendly. However it will only cover your offsite backup needs. There are also tools like Acronis that you can use to backup instantly to your hard drive. One piece of software will not do it all for you.
No one says you need to go out there and buy it all at once. Make a plan and start to construct it. Buying and installing each piece of the backup strategy gradually.
What else do I need?
- One large external hard drive (1TB or greater) with either FireWire or USB.
- Some writeable CDs or DVDs.
- A license to Carbonite (giving you unlimited online backup)
- A license to Acronis for instant backup to your hard drive.
Use Acronis to backup to your external drives. You can set this to run daily or every other day depending on how much new data you write.
Configure Carbonite to backup all of your data automatically for you. It will pick up every change up ensure your offsite backup always have the most recent version.
One More Thing…
There’s no point in making backups if you aren’t making sure that your backups work. Get into the habit of check your hard drives at least once or twice a week is recommended. Do a restore of some files from Carbonite on a regular basis to ensure it is working right.
There’s nothing worse than having gone to all the trouble of setting up your external drive to backup weekly and your Carbonite to backup automatically offsite, only to find when you really need to restore some personal data, that your backups are corrupted or aren’t readable.
The personal data we have stored on our computer is for most of us and in most cases irreplaceable. For those that don’t agree, then you woould agree that the effort to replace it would be significant and very time consuming. Think about it, if they are photos that you have lost, how do you go back and take more, maybe scan in printed versions? Not much fun.
Your personal data goes way beyond what you have saved in Documents, or in music or video folders. It includes all your bookmarks,the contacts you have in your Address Book, and the email you have received and sent.
Having a good backup plan and process gives you peace of mind that, when disaster does eventually occur you are prepared.
If you’re aiming to minimise the stress when the time comes where you need your backup, you have to be prepared. Once things start to go wrong, you may not have much time to save the situation.
Misconceptions:
“No problem”, “I keep all my personal data on my external hard drive”.
If you only have your personal data in one place, it isn’t a backup.
It doesn’t matter if your only backup is an internal hard drive, an external hard drive, USB stick, or DVD’s. If you only keep one copy, then you can lose it just through having whatever it’s stored on dying.
So you need more than one method of backing up your important files.
“That’s easy, I back up my computer to an external hard drive once a week with CCC!”
Now here comes the second principle:
A manual backup isn’t as good as an automated backup.
If your backups are done automatically, you know that they will get done (you should always check). If your backups are done manually, there is a good chance that they will get delayed or skipped this week because something more important comes along, you have a busy day, you forget to connect the hard drive, or your busy working on the PC and don’t want to be interrupted.
A backup that relies on you actually doing something to make it happen is far less likely to be truly useful than one that happens automatically.
“I don’t need a backup, all my data is on a NAS and that’s using RAID!”
RAID is not a backup.
RAID will keep your system running and you working even though you have had a hardware failure. Its fantastic technology. You do however require redundancy. Now if your have a hard drive failure not only will your systems keep working but you won’t lose your data.
When you look at this situation it’s easy to see why it could be mistaken for a backup. You don’t lose data when hardware fails.
Even with a RAID, you can still accidentally delete files. RAID will not help you get them back. Making sure its backed up will. RAID helps your systems keep running when hardware fails. A backup, though, is what you need when you lose data.
So there you have it, some common misconceptions regarding your backup. Next week we will go into some of the strategies you can use to built a strong backup process.
How safe is your method of backing up critical data?
It has been an interesting couple of years watching the development of online backup services in Australia and most importantly seeing the actual demand grow.Choosing the right solution is obviously important because swapping them isn’t as easy as installing a new piece of software on a few PCs.
Statistics (can’t remember exactly were I read this) suggest that if a business has a major data failure, it is 80 per cent more likely to fail within 3 years.
So what is online backup?
Some people see it as a replacement, I see it as a compliment to existing/traditional backup services such as tapes, drives, USB sticks and even CD/DCDs used for backing up critical business data.
Online backup providers use multiple, secure, replicating data servers that are sometimes located locally or in many cases overseas where your data is transferred and for you in real time over the internet. Most importantly its not just a once off transfer, its an initial backup of all files and then a regular backup what changes from day to day (or even hour to hour). The business benefits are huge.
There are many inherent problems with what were the only real alternatives for backup in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. The problems included failure of hardware and the human error. As we all know, as soon as humans are introduced into an equation, mistakes will be made which is why your disaster recovery strategies and systems should be as far removed as possible from humans. More human element equals more exposure to risk.
Also, the biggest risk faced (bigger than human failure) is that backup that is stored onsite is really not offering much protection should the building suffer a break in or fire or flooding. Backup needs to be kept offisite away from the premises. You can also add to the failure of many businesses to actually test their disaster recovery strategies.
The bottom line is: a business without backup is an accident waiting to happen.
Online saves on downtime
So why use online? One factor is the amount of downtime involved with using any of the old backup systems, even if you have a successful backup routine, is at least a minimum of several hours if not several days.
Online backup solutions, however, remove the human element, along with any concerns over hardware failure and they reduce the downtime you do have if things go wrong. Also, when all costs are taken into account, they can actually work out to be pretty cost effective for your business. Personally, I think online backup is a no-brainer for any small to medium sized Australian busness.
What do you need to look out for? When you are running your initial upload, you need to keep a eye on your ISP data usage as it is easy to blow your monthly quota. The options you have are to update your broadband plan, wear the cost or simply split the upload over a few months doing the most important files first.
Some guidelines when looking for a provider:
• The location of the servers may be important for some. Providers with servers in the US will be much cheaper than those with servers in Australia. Its an issue of scale.
• Incremental updates. Some providers will take a snapshot of your drives every day and upload them. Others will simply do incremental updates. The more control you have over this the better.
• Multiple replications across tier 1 data centres.
• Sliding scale for data usage. This means that if you do go over your allowances, you either get notified immediately or shift plans immediately to ensure you are never in danger. Some companies simply cap the data and then do not upgrade you automatically. This means some of your data does not get backed up.
• Online ability to get your data when things do go wrong
• Clear ability to show which parts of your systems are and are not being backed up. If it fails and they fail, culpability has to sit with the provider 100 per cent. Conversely, if you fail to have key parts of your data backed up because you either stored it in the wrong place or did not inform the provider of its importance, the fault should lie squarely with you.
This is an outsourcing relationship, so the more clarity there is around responsibility, ownership and timings, the better the relationship will be.
I found this interesting article on Lifehacker the other day. Use the link to get to the original or just read below. What is interesting is that it clearly highlights how dangerous it can be if you are only relying upon external drives or some manual process to manage your backups.
Worst still is the fact that most people don’t even test their backup so in many cases they would continue to think that the backup was doing its thing, only to find that the CDs or external drives are empty.
Using an online backup service like Carbonite is a smart way of ensuring that your backups are up to date and working. We always recommend that you use a combination of external drives and online backup to secure your data, just make sure that you test it all out every few months.
External USB drives are a great way of creating a handy and portable backup. If your drives start giving you trouble, you might conclude that the hardware itself is to blame — but be sure to check the connecting USB cable as well.
While running a manual backup onto a USB hard drive recently, my drive kept connecting and reconnecting, losing the drive mapping in the process and rendering the backup software useless. At first, I suspected that the disk itself might be at fault, but then I decided to try connecting it using a different USB cable, and the whole backup ran without a hitch.
The offending cable (pictured) promptly got sent to the bin. While there were no obvious flaws in it, there’s no point hanging onto an item that’s clearly causing trouble, especially when it’s so cheap and easy to replace.
Naturally, no backup system should rely on a single technology. A combination of a networked backup drive, some cloud storage and some additional USB drives should protect you from most eventualities. If you do just want to use external drives, at least have a pair of them. Learn more with our in-depth backup guide.
I received a call from a customer last week who was using tapes to backup their small business. They only had a few PCs and a server to backup and were backing up weekly as well as taking the tapes offsite.
I was glad to hear that they actually had a strategy and that they were taking their backup offsite. Its most likely these tapes actually sat in the boot of the car which really isn’t recommended given its Summer in Australia and your car could get stolen. It seems many people do this with their hard drives too. The have 2 and swap them every few days or week taking one home or keeping it in the boot of the car. Given the high rate of hard drive failure keeping them in a warm boot isn’t really the most sensible thing to be doing.
The business or the person managing these tapes had become a little tired of the process and was looking for something easier and cheap (cost effective is the word we like to use). So during a brief conversation they asked several questions about how Carbonite worked and seemed to be comfortable with what Carbonite had to offer.
They mentioned stopping the use of tapes altogether and only using Carbonite as the sole backup method. I always get a little worried when I hear this. Not that Carbonite can’t handle the responsibility. Its more about that word “Backup Strategy” and swapping from one backup method to the next to save time and money isn’t really improving the strategy at all.
In a small business environment when your livelihood depends on having that system information always accessible, risking that data with one form of backup is NOT RECOMMENDED. I encouraged her to continue with the tapes or at least consider another form of local backup using hard drives or similar and then having Carbonite as a remote backup service.
They didn’t have a lot of data, 20GB in total I think and retrieving all of this using Carbonite would have been fine and potentially only taken a day or so. My concern was in relation to relying on one form of backup only. Having a layered approach is best, where you combine local and remote to give you real peace of mind.
Relying on any one form of backup is dangerous because sometimes software can fail, more often than not, user error can cause a process to go wrong, particularly when it isn’t tested regularly.
I always encourage users of Carbonite to check regularly enough that their backups are OK. Carbonite will error if it isn’t working and it will tell you if the internet connection has failed. The same principle applies with external drives. You need to check them regularly. Even if you are using an application to run your backups automatically. You should regularly check that its actually doing what you are expecting to. If you aren’t you might just be in for a rude surprise when you eventually do check.
