“80% of companies without well-conceived recovery strategies go out of business within 2 years of a major disaster”.

Source: US National Archives and Records Administration

The above statistic is to be frank, over quoted and much challenged, but it nevertheless serves to remind us of the importance of ensuring our business-critical data is backed up securely. Your Data backup strategy is therefore an important part of your overall business continuity strategy.
 
The case for Online Data Backup

In case you’ve not come across the concept of Online Data Backup, basically we backup business-critical data from your servers across the Internet to our secure servers online. Backups take place every night and only the data that’s changed is transferred so high volumes of data can be backed up on relatively low speed Internet connections.

Traditionally, businesses have used tape systems to backup data on-site, but these have several disadvantages that Online Backup systems overcome:

• Tapes backup systems are troublesome to maintain and can often break down just when you need them most
• Tapes need to be taken off site regularly to protect against on-site disasters such as fire, flood and theft, and this task is often neglected in a busy office
• Tape systems require capital investment and media needs to be regularly replaced which can be expensive

Having said that, a good backup strategy always comprises a minimum of two independent backup systems, one of which should be on-site and one of which should be off-site.  In our customer base, tape backup systems are becoming a thing of the past and data backup systems in general are becoming ever more complex.  Online Data Backup is therefore a key component in many organisations’ strategies today.

What about Security?

Many people worry about security when transferring data across the Internet but in actual fact the levels of encryption (256-bit) offered by a reputable online backup system is often higher than that used even by your bank when logging on to your account online. At this point, may I cheekily introduce one particular reputable brand you might want to consider: D2Vault - D2NA’s very own Online Backup Solution.

What’s different about D2Vault?

• The initial “seed” backup needs to be done on site - we send a qualified engineer to your site to perform the entire configuration, and we also provide the hardware to transfer the initial data seed to our backup servers.
• The whole system is fully supported by our team of experts based in Staffordshire and London
• In the unhappy event of a real disaster, we will deliver a removable storage device containing your data to your site next business day or sooner, AND
• We will provide a qualified Disaster Recovery engineer free of charge for the first day of recovery operations

Who is D2Vault for?

I should point out that D2Vault is designed for business with one or more server(s) hosting data that’s critical to the well-being of that business. There are lower cost providers of Online Backup services which do not offer the on-site start-up service or the Disaster recovery Engineer on site in the event of a disaster. For smaller volumes of data or for home users with less than critical data these services may well be more cost-effective, although having not used any of these I’m afraid I’m not in a position to recommend any.

Breaking news…. plans for 2011….

D2NA is developing a new Virtual Server Backup service which replicates Virtual Servers disks to the D2Cloud online. This means that customers who already utilise the power of Virtual Servers we will be able to offer ground-breaking levels of business continuity.

Needless to say the D2NA family camp is getting very excited about this. Watch this space for more info in the first Quarter of 2011!