Apr 14 2012

Small Business Server Backup

Category: Backup Synology — @ 7:13 am

Small Business Server Backup testimonial from a recent Dependable Computer Guys, Inc. client, in a testimonial from the citisearch website.

Dependable SafeSTOR saved the day! Testimonial by BethJenkins via Citysearch

“We would have been completely shut down if it hadn’t been for not only the Dependable SafeStor device, but the quick access we had to a technician at Dependable Computer Guys! And, this was on New Years Eve! I highly recommend Dependable Computer Guys and even more importantly, the Dependable SafeStor service.”

“I have worked with Dependable Computer Guys for a number of years now. They have done an excellent job handling all of the IT needs of our company. The most important service they have provided is Dependable SafeStor. We went onto the SafeStor service in December. Just a few weeks after starting, our computer server failed. We were unable to function at all. I called Dependable Computer Guys and within 20 minutes, remotely, they were able to switch us over to the SafeStor device and we were completely operational. We were able to be up and running while our server problem was diagnosed, the parts were ordered and the repair made.

Beth indicated that DCG has “Fast, reliable IT support”

Dependable Computer Guys, Incorporated — providing on-site IT support in Los Angeles since 1993. DCG’s proactive monitoring service, called St. Bernard Managed Care is the only IT support service platform that increases reliability while decreasing support costs. DCG is great for small and medium sized businesses that depend on reliable IT infrastructure; but don’t want to spend a lot of money to keep it that way. For a free walk-thru, call Brent Whitfield at 213-261-3998. Dependable Computer Guys is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and we support the following Microsoft Servers: Microsoft Standard & Enterprise Server, Small Business Server, Exchange and SQL server. Other technologies we support: Citrix, Cisco, Sonicwall, IBM Lotus Notes Domino,VMWare virtual server, Symantec Veritas, and StorageCraft Backup solutions, and all VPN’s. For backup and disaster recovery ask about Dependable SafeSTOR, DCG’s server backup solution.

New Dependable Computer Guys clients will receive FREE enterprise-grade Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware security software, for all their servers and workstations, when they outsource their IT with Dependable Computer Guys, Inc. For more information contact Brent Whitfield at 213-261-3998 to schedule your FREE on site walk-thru and IT evaluation. Dependable Computer Guys, Inc. is great for small businesses who depend on a reliable network, but don’t want to spend a lot to keep it that way. Offer limited to companies with at least one server and ten workstations.

CRM Database Backup:
Goldmine Database Backup, ACT Database Backup, and most other r SQL backup processes and/or Pervasive backup processes.

Virtualized Servers Backup:
Citrix server, Microsoft Servers running under the Microsoft Hyper “V” Virtualized and/or VMWare/ESX servers environments, and, of course Windows Terminal Server.

Microsoft Small Business Server Backup:
Microsoft Standard Server Backup, Microsoft SBS Server backup, Microsoft Small Business Server backup, MS Exchange Server backup, Microsoft Exchange Server “Brick” backup, and Microsoft SQL server backup

Accounting Program Backup:
Great Planes Backup, and Business Vision Backup. Quicken Backup and Quickbooks Backup, Peachtree Btrieve Backup and Microsoft Navision Pervasive Backup, and Great Plains Backup.

Dependable Computer Guys, Inc is serious about backing up the small business server.

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Apr 12 2012

Backup Your Spreadsheets

Category: Backup Synology — @ 11:13 am

If you’ve ever lost hours of work when your computer crashed, you know why you should backup your spreadsheets – frequently. If you haven’t had it happen to you yet, don’t think that it never will. Chances are you’re going to have it happen to you eventually. If and when it does, if you have your spreadsheets and other data backed up, it won’t affect you as bad as if you didn’t have a backup. Using the three methods below, you should have a pretty airtight plan for backing up your important data, including all your spreadsheets.

Save Often
If you haven’t learned this by now, it’s something you should be doing. Saving your spreadsheet every ten minutes or so will make sure you don’t lose any of your important data. Most people don’t start doing this until AFTER they have lost a file and a few hours of work. With a keyboard combination (Control-S usually), there’s no reason not to save frequently so you don’t lose any data in your spreadsheets.

While this is a good idea, it still won’t help if something happens to your computer or your hard drive.

Backup to Flash
Beyond saving your files every ten minutes or so, it’s a good idea to back up to a flash drive at the end of each day when you’re done working. The best way is to keep all your spreadsheets and other files in a single folder than you can just drag and drop to your flash drive, making sure you don’t forget any important files. While flash drives are dependable, you don’t want to put all your faith in them either, especially if your files are irreplaceable.

Backup to DVD
Once a week or once a month, you should backup all your files (including your spreadsheets) to a DVD for more permanent storage.

DVDs won’t last forever, but if you’re backing everything up after a month, you can begin to get rid of your older DVD backups, making sure the ones you have are new and won’t give you any problems when you try to read the data on them.

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Apr 08 2012

Tape Backup Cartridges

Category: Backup Synology — @ 7:14 pm

Tape backup cartridges have been favoured for decades, and why? They are cost effective and great for long term storage of data. They are also durable and easy to file. This type of data storage is used by data being transferred onto a magnetic tape.

One of the favourable features of tape backup cartridge is that it allows for sequential data retrieval rather than random, as that of data hard drives do. The negative to this, however, is that seek time of this type of data storage is considerably longer than a hard drive. An upside to this technology is that it can stream data as quickly as a hard drive.

Tape backup cartridges are versatile, with their capacity for storage can range anywhere from a few megabytes, perfect for use as personal storage, to a tons of gigabytes, which is ideal for organising work data and information.

This technology can be used by any computer.

They are connected simply through a variety of ways. USB, Fibre channels and FireWire are just a few possibilities of how you can use these kinds of tapes in your workplace or home and just how accessible they are to your computer.

There are some problems, however, with tape backup cartridges; one being that many of the older designs had a stop start effect. This is when the data that is being streamed on the tape cartridge falls below the minimum threshold at which the tapes were designed to transfer data. When this occurs, the tape has to in effect rewind to accelerate again. This obviously takes additional time.

This problem was solved, when, with a later design, in the 1980s a buffer was added. Simply this meant that if there was no data there the tape would stop and similarly, if the buffer was full the tape would stop.

Other than in these two circumstances the later design prevented most of the stop start function that was so troublesome in the previous designs.

Now, most backup tapes operate a number of speeds. Now these tapes read what speed the computer they are attached to operate at and then factions accordingly. These speeds range from 50%, 75% and full speed. This allows fewer problems and makes accessing data easier. There can still be issues however. If a computer reads data slower than the lowest speed of tape backup cartridge there will still be a stop start effect.

When the stop start feature appears (this is also known as shoe shinning) it will affect the attainable data rate and this can also place an additional pressure on to the tape.

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Mar 27 2012

Managed Backup Service Benefits

Category: Backup Synology — @ 10:13 am

There are many benefits when you choose to work with a managed backup provider.

Most business owners do not know how to backup all of their data themselves. They may specialize in other areas, but data protection is not their specialty.

They may think they have a backup system in place, but are not actively monitoring the backups. In their minds their data is being backed up, but really it is not. Just because someone thinks something is happening, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is happening.

When you hire a backup professional, you can be sure that your backups are being completed. This will give you the peace of mind that someone is taking care of it, rather than just hoping the backups are being completed.

Managing a data backup system for your office takes time. You don’t set it up one time and then forget about it. If you have a tape backup system, someone has to actually make sure that the backups are being completed. To figure out the cost of this, all you have to do is take the amount of time it takes to change out the tapes on a daily basis then multiply that by their hourly wage.

The people that you have changing out your tapes may not really know what they are doing. They may not properly backup the data or they may accidentally overwrite the backups. There is a lot of room for error with this system.

Another thing to worry about is that when they are taking the backup tapes offsite, they may lose the backup tapes. Or, they may leave the backup tapes in their car and then they get stolen. You may have seen news reports about banks and medical institutions that have lost millions of records because of tapes getting stolen.

Then if a disaster strikes, you are in trouble when you try to recover the data. Or what if you have to recover a version of a file from a year ago and the secretary accidentally deleted it because they over-wrote the tape.
That is why it is important to hire a company to manage the data backups for you.

They can quickly do an assessment of how much data needs to be protected. Then they can deploy a backup system for you and make sure that all of the critical information is backed up locally and backed up safely off-site. This managed backup company can also monitor the backups and make sure they are being completed. Protecting your data is a great investment. Take steps to day to ensure that your data is safe.

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Mar 15 2012

Protecting Your Backup

Category: Backup Synology — @ 1:14 am

Most of the businesses today have some kind of backup policy. I have seen even the smallest business owners take their Data Backup on Optical media or across the network on another PC. The more diligent ones do it on Removable Tape media.

However, most of the IT managers forget that as important it is to take backup, it’s equally important to safeguard the backup media. What good is your backup, if your Tape containing backup is lying next to your monitor, exposed to the same physical threats as your PC.

For maximum protection of your data and to ensure business continuity, it’s always recommended to store your backup data off-site.

It’s safer when it’s physically isolated from the environment where your main data is lying. With offsite storage of your backup data, it’s safe from the factors that might risk your primary data ( Fire, flood etc).

Large corporates use third-party media storage services to store their backup media off the site. However for the smaller businesses, such a service is not economical. For such small and medium business the best choice is to store their data in a safe that is fireproof and waterproof.

Your backup is no good is the backup media is not stored safely.

Consider an IT manager who ritually backs up the data on his LTO-4 data tapes. However the data tapes are stored in his drawer next to his workstation. Imagine a fire, flood or a theft that takes place in the office.

Do you think your data in the LTO-4 tape will survive?

To store your media securely is as important as taking backup of your critical data. Most of the IT managers realize that the threat of data loss is very real ( that’s why we take backup), but very few have a safe backup media storage policy.

Storage should be Waterproof and Fireproof

You should not settle for anything less than fireproof and waterproof storage for your Data Media. Look for third party certification on fireproof storage. The fireproof safes are made in such a way that it doesn’t get extremely hot inside even after being in fire. If the internal temperature exceeds the maximum tolerance level, you may lose the data on Magnetic/optical media.

Waterproof ratings are submersion tested and certify the safes for how long they can remain submerged in water.

 

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