Small Business Backup in Practise
This week we decided to do something a little different and get some input from a couple of our Twitter followers on online backup plans and practices that they have put in place recently with small business customers.
When I asked the guys, I advised that they didn’t need to have Carbonite in the story, as I was more interested in the backup plan as such rather than the technology.
So I have a couple good stories to share with you this week.
The first is from Grant Booth from Upside Down Websites. You can learn more about Grant and his many services by following him on Twitter or visiting his website. www.upsidedownwebsites.com
I was asked a year ago to audit a local newspaper’s backup. They already had something set up but wanted to upgrade their backup so that they could be up and running in 30 minutes following a complete data/system failure.
The current backup included a Raid1 set up on the server with all data from the Raid duplicated to two NAS drives (rotating weekly – if they remembered) once per week (one kept offsite).
The goal was to offer 100% recovery in 30 minutes. Therefore, even though the Raid or Server could have a total 100% failure, we also installed Carbonite for live offsite back up (presently 300GB of data).
The newspaper has a deadline of 7pm on a Tuesday night. With the above mentioned setup they could now be up and running within 20 minutes by either plugging the NAS directly into a work or home computer or using Carbonite’s remote access to download the files to any computer and complete their deadline.
The combination of local and offsite/online backup means the paper can now recover from 99% of disasters save a nature disaster where having the newspaper out the next day would simply not be necessary.
The second story is from Dan Rippon. You can catch Dan and his many talents at www.thatcomputerguy.net.au or via Twitter
I have a financial services client running online backup for their server, prior to which they had nothing at all in place (shudder!). Online backup was chosen as it removes the need for big up front hardware investment and also potential for human failure in not maintaining tape rotations – and without an in-house IT person, this was a large factor. The firm has a light business broadband plan with a data quota of 100GB per month. This wasn’t enough to support an upload of the initial data via the internet.
The online backup provider I used in this instance was Onlinebackupservices.com.au, a business I have had a long association with. The initial upload of which was done via a data dump to a USB drive. The drive was sent by the online backup provider and I took care of the configuration and initial extract. I couriered the drive back to Melbourne shortly after, where the provider uploaded it directly to their server. From there the software client kicked in to sync everything up.
Backup is set to the company data folders, so anything added is backed up; data retention is currently 365 days but could be more.
I get an email every morning of backup activity so I can react to any issues if needed, otherwise it runs like it should.
So there you have it, two original and real small business online backup stories directly from Carbonite resellers. Thanks again guys and keep up the good work.
To further assist resellers of PCs or home support service providers, Carbonite Australia has developed a desktop shortcut icon that can be easily placed on a client’s PC that links to a free 30 Day Carbonite Trial. This desktop shortcut will carry your affiliate code and any sales generated from 30 Day trials activated by your clients, will automatically generate a commission for you.