AvianBLUE manages automated backup solutions for servers and client machines. Our goal when implementing such a solution is to minimize the visibility and interaction of end users. Backup should occur seamlessly and in the background.Standardized, lightweight backup tools are used. We strive to provide a solution that is as simple as possible. When it comes to backup, the most complex the backup tool, the more likely it is to fail. Off-site backupUsing Internet AvianBLUE has online partners who offer full-featured online storage for great rates (usually under $50/month for up to 200GB). In the event of a disaster, you can access your data using Windows File Sharing, FTP, or WebDAV. Using Hard DisksWe have successfully implemented tape replacement solutions with our clients. Take a look at the portfolio section to learn more about how we use hot-swappable disk backup by High-Rely and read more about why we don't recommend tape for our clients. Windows Server BackupA Windows Server is the core of your business network. It controls the following:
What many users don't realize is that the configuration of a Windows Server is almost as important as the data that it stores. For this reason, we recommend block-level backup and full disk imaging for Windows Servers, so that downtime is minimal in the event of a failure. The new built-in (and free) Windows Server Backup tool in Windows Server 2008 now supports full disk imaging, and also support open file backup, file pruning (so you don't have to manually delete old backups). In conjunction with a hardware rotating disk mirror (RAID1) solution like a High-Rely as mentioned above, you can have full restore capability and daily off-site backup for under $1,000. Compare that with the $5,000 cost of a tape-based solution consisting of an LTO-4 drive and Symantec Backup Exec. Windows Client PC BackupWe've created a great solution to backup Outlook PST files without asking the user to perform any steps like closing Outlook. Our solution is based on the industry-standard rsync program, and initiates backups from the network server in a "pull" fashion, all while Outlook is running! As it uses rsync, only the changes to the PST files are transferred and stored each time. When you are dealing with multi-gigabyte PSTs, this is a huge plus!
Open File BackupIn the Windows world, open file backup has been a source of frustration for users and system administrators for decades. This drawback necessitates closing all open applications and leaving them closed in order to do a backup. Almost all backup programs on Windows are limited by this. Did you know that if you leave MS Outlook running while doing backups, your Outlook is probably not being backed up at all?! This is a big deal, because more often than not, the data that is in Outlook is the critical data that you are looking to back up! Linux Server BackupA great feature of Linux is its native support of backing up open files. In fact, in many cases your network server already has the tools necessary to keep backups of all of your data; the feature just needs to be turned on and configured. Historical Backups (point-in-time)The next step in proper data backup plan is to retain point-in-time versions of your data, also called "snapshots".In our experience, most data loss is caused by user error. For example, deleting a folder. In these cases, a simple daily synchronization of your data would not help. In such a setup, any changes made to the original data are replicated to the backup, so your deleted folder would also be deleted from the backup! Ouch! For this reason, we encourage retention of backups for at least one month. Data loss may go unnoticed for as long as this. The added bonus of a snapshot backup is that you can go back several versions to find where something went wrong. Try that with a simple synchronization! |