Backup & Recovery: Real Life Examples

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During Hurricane Florence companies realized just how important multi-tiered backup solutions are. The coastal areas were of course affected, but the surprise was inland. Many people were caught off-guard by the amount of rain and how fast flooding occurred. When faced with the need to leave quickly, there are so many things you want to pack but simply can’t. When it comes to business, or even family, data is of the utmost importance. Having backups on-site is good, but having another in the cloud is better. People had to leave the buildings where they worked, families had to be rescued from dwellings as water levels rapidly rose. Grabbing a computer is the last thing on your mind when confronted with this. Keeping technology dry and safe is second to you and your family’s safety. Everyone knows you can replace the device. When your data is in the cloud, you can now restore from anywhere.

There are many ways to backup online. The better services provide not just data files, like word processing or spreadsheet files, to be backed up but system files like the operating systems files, updates, application files and more. When you lose your server, with this service, you can replace the server and then restore the system files AND the data files. This saves much more time and can be done from any location you can work from.

Many companies, particularly smaller ones, don’t feel the need for a multi-tiered backup solution. In most cases they don’t want to pay the extra money for it. It shouldn’t be a high cost at all. There are many reasons why it is a good idea to have this. A hurricane is not the only reason.

Call the experts at ASE to understand the many reasons why a multi-tiered solution is so important for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity.

Robert Lane
President/Owner
ASE, Inc.
Getting you ready for tomorrow today
703-273-8388 ext 111

ASE, Inc. is an IT technical support services and consulting firm in the Washington DC Metro area.  Since 2000 ASE has focused on providing full outsourced IT department services to small and medium businesses as well as providing senior level expertise designing, installing and managing complex networks as well as security consulting to very large entities in both commercial and federal markets.  Call ASE today – 703-273-8388.

Backups for Small Business

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Every year ASE reviews some backup solutions to see if they would be a good fit for small businesses. This year 2 issues were kept in mind during the review: is an offsite solution inexpensive, and, how to better protect the data against malware like ransomware (Cryptolocker, etc…).

This year some more providers offer the ability to both store in the cloud, and, use a device, like a Network Attached Storage (NAS), in the small business office to also store backups. Some providers are implementing a solution that better protects the NAS against malware that encrypts data. Having a local backup makes restores much better and faster in the event of a disaster. Then, if that proves to not be an option, the cloud backup can be used.

I’m old fashion and prefer to call a company, as opposed to just reading the website, to discuss their services. Ask them about the onsite option in addition to the offsite service. If you don’t have any compliance requirements there are great inexpensive solutions out there providing online, offsite backup services. Your local solution (NAS) shouldn’t cost any extra. Get a quote for the amount of data you have.

Hope this helps.

Robert Lane
President/Owner
ASE, Inc.
Getting you ready for tomorrow today
703-273-8388 ext 111

ASE, Inc. is an IT technical support services and consulting firm in the Washington DC Metro area. Since 2000 ASE has focused on providing full outsourced IT department services to small and medium businesses as well as providing senior level expertise designing, installing and managing complex networks as well as security consulting to very large entities in both commercial and federal markets.  Call ASE today – 703-273-8388.

The Cost of the Cloud

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You have heard so much about “the cloud” and you probably don’t know exactly what that means but more importantly you have heard that it can save you time, which can equate to money, and money. Let me tell you what we see in the field.

As IT consultants to small & medium businesses we help them utilize what they have as well as discover what new technologies they can employ to save time and money. It is true that the cloud is an amazing thing. Here are some quick helpful facts:

  1. If you are thinking of starting a business you can get up and running much faster these days with a lot less capital expenditure. That is extremely helpful in this economy.
  2. The cloud can help you off load some very important services that your company must perform such as backups, email and, depending on what data you generate, database type services as well as financial.
  3. From a disaster recovery/business continuity perspective you can recover from a disaster and continue doing business quickly as your data is off site (like backups, email) and you can simply log in from a new location or system and get your data.

Now let’s talk about the cost. We have seen so many companies pull back out of the cloud mostly due to the cost. Many companies did the math up front and found that for their needs and based on what they had, the service they were looking to use in the cloud was too costly. Here is an example: a company of 10 people has 150 GBs of data that is critical (yes, there is a difference between important and critical data) and that data needs to have a SAS 70 Type II facility (for reasons that would take too long to explain in this article) – IF – they are to store off site. What’s more, they need snapshots of data at intervals of 6 months to be stored. Many cloud backup services don’t have SAS 70 Type II facilities nor do they do 6 month snapshots. They perform rolling 30 day backups meaning that on day 31 the data that was backed up over 30 days ago is gone or copied over. Just like many other companies in the U.S. right now, money is tight and watched like a hawk. Based on the above criteria the cost per GB averages a little over $3.00 so that means that the company would have to pay $450.00 per month for this cloud service. Many would just say, “no”.

Here is another downside. We have seen some small businesses completely outsource all of their software to the cloud (In this case the cloud is basically a company that has a datacenter who owns the software and lets the user “rent” the use of it). This means that the user owns nothing and has nothing on their server and personal systems. You may think it’s a great idea. You would until you encounter the time when you have to be or want to be productive and you have no internet connection. Remember, you need the connection to get to the server that has all of your software which is at the datacenter where all of your software is hosted – the cloud. To do this you have turn on your computer, log in, connect to the internet, log in to their server, open up the application and start working. (So much for quick productivity!) Since, in this instance, there is no internet connection AND since you have no applications on your personal system you cannot simply turn on your personal computer, log in, open the app and start typing.

What should you do? You want to take your time when making decisions about the cloud or any outsourced services. If you don’t have the time or the knowledge to research what you need find a consultant who can not only research the latest services out there but who also may be able to provide them to you. The reputable ones will research with you what you have, your needs, your budget and make the appropriate recommendations. For example, off site backups may be too expensive but hosted email – a perfect fit.

Hope this helps.

Robert Lane

President/Owner
ASE, Inc.
Getting you ready for tomorrow today
703-273-8388 ext 111

ASE, Inc. is an IT consulting, engineering, hosted and managed support services provider covering the Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC area.  Since 2000 ASE has focused on providing full outsourced IT department services to small and medium businesses as well as providing senior level expertise designing, installing and managing complex databases and network security consulting to very large entities in both commercial and federal markets.  Call ASE today – 703-273-8388.

Lawyers – Is Your TABS Backup Working?

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If you are like many law firms you use TABS and actually in many cases this is the main product that law firms run on.  We have had great success transitioning companies to our on line off site backup solution (ASE BackupPro) because it reduces the problems of in-house backups such as reducing CapEx by not having to buy the expensive products, it takes the human element out of the equation since no tapes have to be changed or taken off site, and, it works – everyday.  But there are some products that don’t lend themselves kindly to on line off site backups so that is what this article is about.

I received a call from a law firm who had a disaster inquiring about our on line off site backup solution.  I explained that for me to give them the best possible advice they needed to list all of the products on their network.  When I saw TABS I contacted the manufacturer who verified that TABS and all of its modules cannot be backed up using a method that performs differential or incremental backups (we’ll use differentials).  To explain how it works: once installed, the backup solution does a complete backup of your network (what you designate to be backed up) and from that point forward as files are changed, added or deleted, they are backed up every day (simple way of describing it.).  TABS is a product whose data cannot be restored if the backup solution performs differentials.  Please note that many of the external hard drives you buy to use as a backup solution also use this method.

So how do you solve this problem?  Create a second task where only the TABS program and its data are backed up in one complete process.  You can also configure your external hard drive to do the same.  Now you will have a complete backup of all of your data not including the TABS stuff and a second with just the TABS data. 

Timeslips by SAGE is another product for the legal niche and must be handled in the same way.

I would be interested in knowing how many of you knew this.

Robert Lane.

ASE, Inc.

Robert Lane is the owner of ASE, Inc. a provider of IT consulting, engineering, hosted and managed services in Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC since 2000.  For more information on ASE’s BackupPro contact Robert at 703-273-8388  ext 111.  You can find more information at goaseinc-staging.coydhea2-liquidwebsites.com and www.IT4smallbusiness.org.