System backup solutions take many forms and come in many sizes. Over the past few years the "standard" backup solution has begun to change.

The "old" solution has been to use tape drives. Although extremely useful for offsite storage and archive, this solution (overall) is time consuming, unreliable, and expensive. Today's backup solutions are provided through a combination of hard drive storage devices and remote storage facilities to protect against disaster and theft.

Traditional "old" tape backup solution issues:

Gartner Group study revealed that 70% of backups fail and are not realized until recovery is attempted.
Backups are stored without encryption.
Offsite storage is a manual process and rarely performed.
No redundancy
High overhead

Why do companies need backup solutions?

Simple:

Data corruption WILL happen
Mistakes WILL happen
Hard drives WILL fail
Motherboards WILL fail

Many companies do not invest in a backup solution for two reasons. First, they believe the issues mentioned will never happen to them and second, backup systems are too expensive.

Has your company examined the cost of not using a reliable backup solution? Total cost includes downtime, labor to recreate any missing data, and time lost by those who needed the data to perform their jobs.

Examine a scenario where a company has only 5 PCs, 1 Windows 2003 file server and domain controller, and 5 users. The server's main hard drive has crashed and is unrecoverable (this is a common issue).

If the server crashed and no full backup was available, let's see what would need to be done to restore the system.

New hard drive procured and installed.
Hard dive needs to be formatted.
Operating system reinstalled
Computer accounts recreated
User accounts recreated
Security policies need to be recreated
Directory structure recreated
Local user profiles must be backed up (in order to save current user settings)
All client PCs must be removed from the old domain and joined to the new domain

Even with a simple 5 user setup shown here, the rebuild can take more than 16 hours to perform.

iValley has investigated different backup solutions to provide your company with options to keep your data safe, while keeping your bottom line in view.

 

Imagine a worst case scenario. You are woken up by a call in the middle of the night. A fire has broken out in your building and burned most of your systems, including your servers. All the data is irretrievable. The backups you had on-site were also damaged by the fire and the last time someone remembered to take a backup tape off-site was over a year ago.

Will the company survive? Will the only backup tape you have off-site even be readable after a year? For many small companies, this has become a reality.

Backup remains the single most costly storage administration task and many companies don't backup data at all (Gartner Group). According to Gartner, 40% of businesses suffering a business interruption fail within 5 years. Gartner estimates that less than half of all mid-size businesses and only 25% of small businesses have disaster recovery plans in place (Computer Technology Review - October 31st. 2004). 50% of tape-based backups fail to restore correctly (Gartner Group). Tapes are affected by magnetic fields, temperature, and moisture. A backup may be reported by the software as successful, but just moments after the backup is completed, the tape may be affected by these forces, causing data loss or tape malfunction. - Over 50% of employees backing up data misconfigure backup software. (Iron Mountain) - Over 34% do not test their backups and of those that tested 77% found their tape backups fail to recover. (Storage Magazine).

iValley's Backup and Disaster Recovery solutions (BDR) are completely automated, managed, and low cost compared to traditional tape backup solutions.

iValley Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) Price comparison to tape backup (prices as of 10/20/2008):
Server scenario - Microsoft Small Business Server with Exchange using 40 GB total data storage

Tape drive:	$569
Tapes: 26 (2 week backup rotation + end of month) @ $12.99 ea.:	$337.74
Cleaning tape:	$4.99
Software: Backup Exec SBE	$695.99
Total Equipment	$1,608

The above scenario does not factor in labor for installation and daily maintenance. This scenario also does not provide for off-site storage and has no server virtualization.

Assuming minimum wage (2008) of $8.00 / hr and an average of 15 minutes to change data tapes and check backup logs adds an additional $520 per year. Of course, this assumes the user will be available to change the tape and check logs each weekday, including holidays and vacation. This also assumes every backup is successful, requiring no troubleshooting and repair.

Over 3 years the labor cost adds an additional $1,560 to the cost, bringing the total to $3,168.

The iValley BDR solution automates the entire backup process, removing the need for on-site administration of backups. Data integrity checks are made on the data, and backups are performed every 15 minutes, as opposed to most tape systems, which occur 1 time per day. The iValley BDR solution also provides for virtualization of up to 10 servers simultaneously in event of failure.

What is server virtualization?

Server virtualization allows the virtualization device (in this case the iValley BDR) to take over the roll as the server that has failed by creating a virtual environment for the server and software. Within approximately 15 minutes, the server environment can be brought online utilizing the latest server snapshot (taken every 15 minutes). This allows users to continue to work, saving files, receiving email, etc., as they normally would while the real server is repaired. Backups of the data still occur as normal. When the real server is brought back online, the latest virtual server backup is transfered to the real server and the real server is brought back online. The restore process can be done after hours, which minimizes disruption to the company.

Have you realized how much a simple virus infection can cost your company? Not only is your data at risk, but virus infections can cause your system to run slow, reducing productivity, random crashes or system freezes, causing downtime, and even releasing private information, like credit card and social security information.

One thing to understand when choosing antivirus and antispam software is no software package is proven to be 100% safe. iValley only recommends software with proven track records and are able to stop the latest infections. Unfortunately, virus detection is a cat and mouse game. The virus makers are not going to call your antivirus company and tell them they have created a new virus that circumvents their protection. Of course not. Instead, the virus must infect a system. Then, once the infection is brought to the attention of the AV software company, they must find a way to detect the infection and remove it. This can take days or sometimes weeks.

The best antivirus or antispyware protection is a little common sense! If you receive an email from someone you don't know that has an attachment, don't open it! Many cracked or hacked programs available for download are infected with viruses. Don't think just because the program is free, it isn't witout cost. Download shareware and freeware applications from well respected web sites that scan their offered software for infections. and be careful of where you go on the internet.

iValley provides programs and products to block bad web sites from being accessed, as well as monitored antivirus and andtispyware solutions, which can notify us of infections, allowing us to take action, many times before the user becomes aware of it, thereby avoiding loss of data or productivity.

Not all antivirus and antispam software is the same. Even the most popular software can slow down your computer to a crawl and allow infections to get through. Some software packages provide a full suite of protection, but end up slowing down your PC more than a virus infection! Although iValley Technology Partners will support any virus protection you may currently have in place, we will only recommend those software packages we have fully tested and put through their paces.