Thanks to technology being reliable, catastrophic failures are not a common occurance, but there are multiple threats to data in any organisation including:

Disk Failure
Time and normal wear and tear can cause hard drives to develop corrupted areas or fail completely resulting in some or all files being corrupted or unreadable. If this happens recovering the data can be possible, but often the drive is left inaccessible meaning if there is no other copy of the data the only option for the recovery can be expensive forensic approaches.

User Error
It’s all too easy to delete the wrong file, click Save instead of Save As and erase or overwrite an important file or folder. With the right knowledge these actions can be undone relatively easily but can still cause unnecessary delays.

Theft
While your office is secure thieves can still break in and computers (especially laptops) are desirable targets. With the increase in mobile computing devices are at risk more than ever as they are left in cars and residential homes or simply left behind at a cafe.

Disaster
A fire can break out from an electrical fault, a neighbouring building catching alight or arson. A small leak in the wrong place from heavy rain, or worse a waterline rupturing can all ruin an entire office of equipment.

Malware
Malicious software can infect a computer or whole networks of PC’s through a variety of mediums and wreak havoc on your ability to do business or access data.

Any of these events can strike without warning at any time, and while equipment can be easily be replaced through insurance, what about the data? It’s difficult to gauge the monetary value of data or the impact to your business reputation if you can’t deliver to your customers.

A real world example

If you’ve read our Rethink Ink? Article you’ll be familiar with Bill, who runs a small business with five staff. His office is a busy one, with each employee dedicated to a certain set of tasks that has its own associated data. The six computers in the office are networked and they share several software packages (for accounting, customer management and job scheduling) that are used in different capacities, and each employee has a combination of shared and local documents. Bill’s laptop is the most powerful PC in the office, and because he takes it home with him at night the majority of the data is stored on it, which he backs up most nights to an external hard drive he keeps at home. Each of his staff has spreadsheets and document templates they use daily when dealing with customers and most of them have their own method of backing these up (to CD or flash drive). If the office was burgled or burnt down it’s hard to say how complete the backup up to that point would be or how much time it would take to restore it.

Considering Bills situation there are a few issues:

Data Security
Many approaches to backup do not take into account the need to keep customer and business information private. While we are fortunate that New Zealand does not have an excessively litigious culture, there are still obligations that businesses have under the privacy act to ensure that if personal information is collected, it is managed securely. High profile cases of government employees forgetting laptops with such data show how damaging such an innocent mistake can be. Bill takes his laptop home with him at nights and over the weekend, and backs it up to a hard drive there which creates several opportunities for theft.

Data Integrity
In this context integrity refers to all of Bills office data, which is spread across multiple computers and backed up in different ways. Should one or all of the computers fail it is uncertain whether the data could be restored completely without some files missing or being the incorrect version, meaning there is little integrity.

Backup Consistency
Because backups are done manually they rely on the staff having time and remembering to do them. On days where the office has been extra busy or one of the staff has (for example) a doctors appointment the backup doesn’t get done, and sometimes this is the situation for several days meaning that on occasion the most recent backup is up to a week old.

Restoration Time
Bill’s external hard drive is at his house, and often staff forget to bring their flash drives or CD’s with them, meaning that if they needed to restore data they would have to drive home and collect them. If a restoration is required multiple staff have to get involved (rather than one person taking care of it) costing money in wages and lost productivity.

Until now Bill has been lucky and has not had a major incident. On a couple of occasions staff have accidentally overwritten files and have had to rewrite documents, but he has not yet had a theft, fire or hard disk crash.

A good backup system needs to reliably backup all required information on a regular basis to an easily accessible location and store it securely. Should a restoration be needed individual files or folders should be accessible and be able to be restored quickly without requiring a lot of time or input from users.

Keeping Bills situation in mind, the first step in implementing a good backup system is to look at how data is arranged in the office. The office has a fast, reliable network over which data sources and files are shared with staff storing some files locally, so Bill could consider moving or copying all important files to a centralised point so there is only one location that needs to be backed up. Whether Bill does this or leaves the data spread out as it currently is, there are several methods of backup that could be considered:

Backup Solutions

RAID Array
Raid stands for 'Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks' and is one of the most common methods for data security as it is real time and automatic. It takes the approach of safety in numbers: two or more hard drives are grouped together to work as a single drive, with data copied or spread across the drives depending on the configuration.

As the name suggests RAID uses several standard, low cost drives that are arranged so if one drive fails the data is still available. A RAID array can be configured in several different ways depending on the amount of data, the speed required and the importance of redundancy. One of the most common configurations is RAID 1, where two identical hard drives have the same data written to them simultaneously. If one drive fails mechanically, the other keeps running so the data remains accessible. When the failed drive is replaced the data is automatically copied across to it so redundancy is restored. A RAID array can be housed in a server computer, or in a NAS (network attached storage), which is connected to a network.

While this protects your data from most mechanical failures, it does not protect it from theft, fire or other local events, so it is usually used in conjunction with an offsite backup system.

Manual offsite backup
This involves taking a snapshot of important data, saving it to a portable medium (CD, flash drive etc) and taking it offsite. The main advantages are that it is cheap and stored offsite thus protecting against office break-ins, fires etc.

The disadvantages are that unless the data is encrypted it is not secure, the backup is only as recent as the last time it was backed up (which is usually once every 24 hours) and it is dependent on you having the time and remembering to do it. There are, however, automated solutions that automatically do the backup, and you simply need to check the backup is complete and take the backup device with you offsite.

Automated online backup
With internet access becoming faster and cheaper in NZ, online backup is now an affordable and reasonably fast method of backup. There are a large number of online backup services that password protect, encrypt and store your data on offsite servers which are located in a secure data facility.

Advantages are that it is automated, regular and secure. Most systems support multiple versions of documents as well, meaning that the backup could contain a copy of a document from today, yesterday, last week and last month. Should you accidentally overwrite a file or need to revert an earlier version it is simply a matter of selecting that copy and downloading it through a web based interface.

The main disadvantages are that for large amounts of data the initial backup is slow compared to backing up locally, and depending on your broadband plan it can be expensive. Services are also subscription based, so there is an ongoing yearly cost for the service.

Cost

Each of the three backup systems identified have an associated financial and time cost to set up and run. Please note that the prices quoted below are valid at the time of writing and are based on the manufacturers RRP, and include setup by a technician. For an up to date quote or for clarification please contact us.

RAID Array
As mentioned earlier a RAID Array can be located in an existing PC/Server, or as a NAS system. Referring to Bill, if he wished to install a RAID into one of his existing PC's the costs would be:

Component	Quantity	Unit RRP $NZD ex gst	Total
Serial ATA RAID card	1	$60	$60
160GB SATA Hard Drive	2	$75	$150
Installation	1.5	$80	$120
Total:			$330

Alternatively, if Bill wished to install a NAS:

Component	Quantity	Unit RRP $NZD ex gst	Total
D-Link DNS-323 NAS enclosure	1	$450	$450
160GB SATA Hard Drive	2	$75	$150
Installation	1.5	$80	$120
Total:			$720

After the initial purchase price there are no ongoing costs for this system aside from replacement hard drives if they fail outside of the 3yr manufacturer warranty.

Offsite manual backup

Component	Quantity	Unit RRP $NZD ex gst	Total
250GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive	1	$120	$120
Installation	1.5	$80	$120
Total:			$240

If Bill were to keep backing up as he currently does (manually copying the files to hard drive), then there is no setup cost as no installation is needed. However he would be better to work with a consultant to identify the folders that need to be backed up, from which PC the backup should be run, and have the consultant set up backup software to automatically back the files up. Many external hard drives (such as the one quoted here) include backup software that is adequate for situations like Bills.

There is an ongoing staff cost associated with this backup, as a staff member needs to check the backup has run successfully, unplug the hard drive so it can be taken offsite, and plug it back in the next day. Assuming this takes 5 minutes each day and is done 5 days a week the total time per year is about 22 hours.

Automated offsite backup

Component	Quantity	Unit RRP $NZD ex gst	Total
1 year Carbonite License	1	$65	$65
Installation	1	$80	$80
Total:			$145

Once Carbonite has been set up and has completed the initial backup the ongoing cost is approximately $1 per gigabyte of data, and $65+gst per year for the Carbonite license. Bills current data totals just under 5GB so the first backup would cost $5 and take about 4.5 hours to complete. Because this system is automatic and backs up changes to files about every 10 minutes there is no staff time involved.

Summary

	RAID Array	Manual offsite backup	Automated offsite backup
Initial cost	$320 - $720	$120	$145
Ongoing yearly cost	$0	$0 + 22 hours staff labour	$65 + $1 per gigabyte
Protection:
Hardware failure
Power surge
Theft
Office Disaster
Viruses / Malware
User error
Other factors:
Security of backed up data	Secure	Insecure	Secure
Speed of data recovery on failure	Instant	As slow as locating backup	As slow as internet connection
Age of data being recovered	Latest data before failure	~ 1 day old	~10 minutes old

Ultimately the choice of backup system comes down to how your business operates and how much data your business has. In Bill's situation, because he does not have large amounts of data, has data spread across multiple PC's and has many files that are changed regularly (thus making multiple backed up versions handy), an automated offsite backup system would fit his needs well. He might also consider investing in a server or NAS to centralise everything, and protect it locally with a RAID array giving him a realtime backup to prevent downtime, and an offsite backup to protect against other threats.

To discuss your situation and explore which backup solution fits your needs best call us on (06) 825 6208