Offsite backup companies store your data in state of the art safes, to protect them against fire, flood, and even prying eyes. This can be extremely beneficial if unexpected things have a habit of occurring around your office.

Another great thing about offsite backups are the fact that they can be used as stores for your data. You won’t need to rely on online space, as you can easily go to the company who is storing your data and go through it anytime you wish. You can also use online space with most companies as well. You simply upload your data to their online storage area, then go back anytime you wish and view it. This is a very handy feature, similar to a hosting company.

Another benefit of offsite backup is the fact that your data will always be protected, and you won’t have to use CD or DVDs to do it. CD and DVD storage is great for individuals, although there will be quite a bit of them for most businesses. This can get somewhat costly, but more importantly, it will use a lot of space to store the backup files. They can also become damaged or lost, unlike offsite backup storage.

Offsite storage is also great if your business is in a bad area. If Mother Nature has a habit of bashing your area with floods, fires, or hurricanes, you should look into offsite backup storage immediately. They have ways to protect your information from harm, including anything Mother Nature can dish out. There is no need to worry about natural disasters, system failures, hard drive crashes, or data failure with offsite backup storage.

Even though you may not realize it, the data will be available anytime you need it. Online backup services are available anytime, day or night, and can be accessed anywhere you are. Most are easy to set up, and offers you very impressive security measures.

When it comes to offsite backup, you can store virtually any file you need to, such as text files, e-books, contact record, pictures, music, and anything else you can think of. The storage for online backups are virtually endless, capable of storing everything you need.

Offsite backup storage is ideal for any business or corporation. You can store your data with an online offsite backup, or choose to do it physically in an offsite safe. No matter which method of offsite backup you choose – your data will always be protected, and best of all – it will always be there anytime you need it.

Tapes have a technical annual failure in score of 1 to 12 percent. Due to this technical drawback, you should provide more tapes for containing information, as you can never be sure if they would work or would crack down. The multiple tapes that you will need for storing all the information will gradually ruin your budget, that’s why tape backup is often more expensive than offside backup, but it resumes its inadequate and slow working features nevertheless. The number of tapes that fail from either technical or administrative mistakes is estimated around 60 %. Just imagine the total budget for restoring the lost information: it will be enough to make your bankrupt!

But even more astonishingly, tape backups are still used today in many organizations, which are storing all their valuable files on mere tapes. The span that tapes are reliable is about a year: they tend to gradually decay and lose the stored information. Literally every user has experienced a tape deterioration when storing some files. Many end users are seriously disappointed when this happens to them , and start searching for other ways to protect their data. Some companies acquire daily backup regime, which is time and money consuming. Although it serves the requirements put by tape backups, it is highly stressing and can impede the daily regime of the enterprise. Tape backups are likely to have drawbacks, the same as disk . Using both methods is probably the best way to have your data protected.

Recovery procedures in the organizations cost a lot of time and money. You should think of all the things that can cause a disaster, and try to prevent them. You should either hire a security specialist, or make sure your network is protected, or even do both. A disaster recovery planning of a company can be a nerve racking experience for the new employees. The larger you organization is, the more data are likely to vanish into thin air (or network gaps). That’s’ why you should protect the system mainly from hackers , as well as from your own mistakes in file storage.

Offsite backup helps you eliminate the threats posed by ordinary tape backup. You eliminate manual intervention, thus reducing any possible human mistakes that can occur. You make everything works in an automatic and simple way, thus saving a lot of precious time for dealing with other tasks. By automating the entire process, you save installation failures, technical breaks, or property loss. Tape needs physical handling, which surely means MISTAKES: people often make mistakes when dealing with important data. By computizing the whole storing, you can easily reach the expected results, rather than shout at your managers and employers for making something wrong. This whole operation reduces the risks of malfunction up to 20 %: more than a double off the risky percent in tape backup.

Maybe the one and only advantage that tape backup has over digital stores, is that it is removable: it can be moved everywhere, and read everywhere, if you have the proper technology. This is a plus, though, it may soon become a minus: the mobility of the tape backups can also lead to someone taking over your information files. Perhaps it is better if you make an offsite backup.

To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit

www.perfectbackup.co.uk

Backing Up and Restoring Databases in Microsoft SQL Server 2005

MS SQL Server enables you to back up and restore your databases however this can be dificult and not always work correctly we recommend using a great product called Burtle Backups. This can be found by going to www.burtlebackups.com. The SQL Server backup and restore component provides an important safeguard for protecting critical data stored in SQL Server databases. A well-planned backup and restore strategy helps protect databases against data loss caused by a variety of failures. Test your strategy by restoring a set of backups and then recovering your database to prepare you to respond effectively to a disaster.

A copy of data that can be used to restore and recover the data is called a backup. Backups let you restore data after a failure. With good backups, you can recover from many failures, such as:

CD, DVD, Flash Media, and Hard Drive failures

User errors, for example, dropping a table by mistake or data coruption.

Hardware failures, for example, a damaged disk drive or permanent loss of a server. Call Burtle Backups or visit us on the web at http://www.burtlebackups.com

Natural disasters.

Additionally, backups of a database are useful for routine administrative purposes, such as copying a database from one server to another, setting up database mirroring, and archiving. Burtle Backups makes quick and easy.

MS SQL DATA BACKUPS The scope of a backup of data (a data backup) can be a whole database, a partial database, or a set of files or filegroups. For each of these, SQL Server supports full and differential backups:

Full backup A full backup contains all the data in a specific database or set of filegroups or files, and also enough log to allow for recovering that data.

Differential backup A differential backup is based on the latest full backup of the data. This is known as the base of the differential, or the differential base. A differential base is a full backup of read/write data. A differential backup contains only the data that has changed since the differential base. Typically, differential backups that are taken fairly soon after the base backup are smaller and faster to create than the base of a full backup. Therefore, using differential backups can speed up the process of making frequent backups to decrease the risk of data loss. Usually, a differential base is used by several successive differential backups. At restore time, the full backup is restored first, followed by the most recent differential backup. Over time, as a database is updated, the amount of data that is included in differential backups increases. This makes the backup slower to create and to restore. Eventually, another full backup will have to be created to provide a new differential base for another series of differential backups.

To read more about how to backup your Microsoft SQL server go to http://www.burtlebackups.com we offer secure, automatic, remote backups for a low monthly cost with no annual contract. Don’t waste time trying to backup your SQL server.

Remote Backups work basically like regular tape backups, with one important difference. Instead of sending backups to a tape drive or other media attached to the computer it is backing up, a Remote Backup sends it over the Internet (or modems and phone lines) to another computer safely off-site. It does this (usually) at night while the business is closed and nobody is using the computers. It’s completely automatic. In fact, your clients may even forget it’s working every night. Give us a call today at 866-254-3103.

Most large and small businesses put their lives on the line every night and don’t realize it. With businesses depending more and more on the data stored in their computers, proper backups are becoming much more critical. Remote Backups accomplish several essential steps that are often overlooked or done improperly by other backup software – especially in the regular non-automated backup systems.

Backups are done on schedule, every night. Most businesses don’t do this. For one reason or another, they don’t keep a regular backup regimen. Usually it’s because the person responsible for doing backups (if there is one) is too busy doing something else, or someone is using the computer when it’s time for a backup, or they simply forget. Since Remote Backups are done with automated software at night when nobody is using the computer, backups are always done on schedule.

The correct files are backed up. Ordinary backup software is often installed with a list of files to be backed up. This set of files usually represents the state of the system when the software was installed, and often misses critical files. Further, it often fails to back up files that are added later. Compounding this problem, VERY few businesses take the trouble to reset their backup software regularly to include new files. Burtle Backups Automatic Remote Backups solve this problem with a sophisticated system that constantly reevaluates each client’s system, adding files to the backup as needed.

Redundant copies of files are stored using a sophisticated version control system unavailable in any other PC or Server backup service of any kind. This is much too important to overlook. The general definition of “proper” backups requires redundancy. That is, one must keep multiple FULL copies of the same files at different points in their development, called versions. As an example, you should have a different copy of each backed-up file for each day of the week, one for each week in the month, and one for each month in the year. Further, you should be able to easily restore any of your files up to any given point in time. Banks do it, big corporations do it, and so should small businesses. Only Burtle Backups has such an easy to use version control system.

Backups are encrypted for complete security. Would you want someone to be able to slip one of your backup tapes into a pocket and take it to your competitor? It happens all the time. Tape backups are not generally encrypted, so anyone can read them and gain access to your client database, billing records, payroll, tax info, and everything else on your computer. Burtle Backups Remote Backup system encrypts its backups for complete security so nobody, not even the Burtle Backups, can read them except the client himself. Read more about our encryption at www.burtlebackups.com

Finally and most importantly – Backups are immediately sent off-site and stored safely away from the computer and the business. This is where almost every business makes its biggest mistake. Even if you do everything else perfectly, your backups are of little use if your building burns, or you are unable to physically recover your tapes from the premises. Most small companies who do backups leave the tapes in the building with the computer, where they can be destroyed right along with the computer. If you are interested in reselling Burtle Backups we can train you and your staff on this revolutionary backup system. We will provide you with customized training, marketing materials and free support. Give us a call at 86-254-3103 or visit us today at http://www.burtlebackups.com

You may think the increased competition is good for the consumer, to an extent, I agree, but not at the cost of cutting corners and jeopardising the security of your data. We all know and agree a company’s data is its most important asset, and to lose or give access to your competition such an asset is never an option. So please be careful where you store your data.

The general idea of offsite backup is a good one, after all it has a very low proportionate implementation cost and as the correct system should be completely automated the cost of ownership is also very low as well. Unlike tape backup it is also very scalable, you can start small and grow into larger solutions as and when you require with zero disruption but you have to be with the right offsite backup company in the first place.

In today’s data centric environment even smaller companies may have more than one server, just for example a server for Microsoft Exchange/Lotus Notes, a server for Microsoft SQL/Oracle/MySQL and potentially a file and print server, or maybe a single server which carries out all tasks. Smaller companies may still use older inherited Unix based or Novell based systems or may be considering migrating to a lower cost Linux environment. Whet ever you currently use or what you may use in the future your offsite backup solution will need to adapt. Please check, what ever backup company you use, make sure they are always developing their products for the future, your companies future.

Getting data to an offsite location is the easy bit, anybody can click and drag to an ftp site, to optimise your backup and more importantly your recovery times make sure your data is compressed locally or at source. The most important element of any data transfer is security, make sure your data is encrypted before it is transmitted and remains encrypted whilst in storage if this is the case only your organisation will have access to your data.

In what environment is your data stored? There is no point just moving your most important asset to another location, make sure it is totally safe, data should only be backed up to a class 1 data centre with the highest security and safety measures in place, hardware should be clustered so there is no single point of failure within that data centre and for added security and peace of mind the whole data centre and hardware within should be a replicated in real time to a second location in preferably another country.

Imagine your local data backed up every night or when ever you wish to a secure remote location in the UK and then replicated in real-time to a second data centre in a different country.
Finally this whole process must be as efficient as possible. It must be totally secure, fully automated ensuring your staff are focussed on revenue generating functions, it must support open files enabling you to backup regardless of what your systems are doing and it must be capable of incremental backups, after all there is no point re-transmitting a file which has not been accessed for a year.

So after reading this article I now hope it has made you think and understand why the cheapest offsite backup solution is rarely the best.

To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit

www.perfectbackup.co.uk

Online file storage is a means for moving your digital photos, music, movies and projects off your computer via the internet to a remote storage facility, so you can access them from anywhere, share them with friends. Online file storage works by giving you and thousands of other people storage space on large internet servers. This storage is basically used as an extension to your local storage.

A typical example of use would be anybody how has non-critical data such as MP3, MPG, JPEG files who would wish to store data remotely in case of drive failure or loss and may also wish to share said files with friends. Please note this form of data storage is for file data only and would require manual transfer via ftp. Online storage is ideal for a home user looking to secure or store data offsite.

Offsite Backup is a commercial offering, originally used buy large corporate organizations who could afford high bandwidth connections ensuring their data is backed up to third party locations with highest emphasis placed upon security. As the cost of internet connectivity has greatly reduced, offsite secure backup services have become available to smaller businesses. I am sure you can appreciate, if a company, business or organization was to lose data, it would not know who its customers are, who owes money to whom, therefore creating many more challenges than a home user losing their MP3 collection would face.

It is not just an issue of moving file data to a remote location, there are many other factors a company has to address, such as:

What type of data has to be backed up – most companies will have a database in one form or another such as, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Oracle or Lotus Notes which will be running 24 hours a day. A backup solution must contain agents for backing up the databases in question whilst the database is running and must support multiple operating systems, such as Windows, Novel, Linux and Unix etc.

Security – The data to be backed up is “sensitive” and you would certainly not wish to share this data. Before data is backed up it must be encrypted to the highest levels possible, levels used by your bank or the military for example. Your data must be stored whilst still in the encrypted state ensuring only you have access.

Data Backup can create a large manpower overhead, so your offsite solution must be totally automated requiring no human intervention, set and forget.

The hardware must be dedicated for backup and resilient as possible with no single points of failure and then for good measure this whole infrastructure must be replicated in real time to a second datacenter.

All the above factors will ensure your business data is backed up and available for restore regardless of data disaster.

In summary, online storage, great for home users storing MP3, Video and file data. Offsite data backup is a must for business use.

To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit

www.perfectbackup.co.uk