ONLINE BACKUP

We are fully committed to creating our environment as a tapeless environment.  We have built a state of the art data center which currently replicates all backup data to a secondary data center more than 60 miles away, on a different power grid and in a facility that is equivalent to our primary site.

The benefits of online backup

Online backup has quickly become the way to go for those interested in a highly reliable, highly secure, quickly recoverable solution.  Most companies today are still employing the tape backup methodology of backup.  Here is a list of the most common issues we have seen over the past years:

1.        The backup software reports back to you that your backups are all successful.  You go to restore your data only to discover that the tapes are faulty and the data is not recoverable.

2.        The tapes are not kept offsite. The manager leaves the tapes in a firebox only to discover the fire they experienced was too hot for t he box rating and the tapes melted.

3.        The tapes are kept offsite, but not stored safely.  Keeping tapes in a vehicle or a briefcase often seems safe, but if the place where the vehicle or briefcase is too hot, too cold, damp, etc, the data on those tapes can be compromised.

4.        For companies with a tape pickup service there may be a SLA that does not meet your current needs.  If you need your data back from the tapes in 60 minutes, an offsite provider may not be the way to go.

5.        One of the more common errors is human error.  What happens when there is a bad snowstorm, a holiday or a long weekend?  Is the person responsible to swap the tapes going to be there to handle the change?

Offsite storage of tapes is a very common and effective plan.  But depending on how your service level agreement reads, you may be surprised to find your data tapes not sitting in front of you within 5 minutes after you need them. With online backup, as long as you can get an internet connection, you can get your data.