Network Backup
Solutions in Canada

Network Backup
and Risk Management

Any conceivable risk contains within it an obvious solution. Network backup plans strike a balance between the likelihood of an event occurring, the impact of such an event on the business, and the cost of mitigating that impact in advance.

The likelihood of an event ranges from remote to inevitable. The seriousness of an event ranges from inconsequential to catastrophic. The cost of mitigating that impact ranges from nominal to prohibitive.

Whether the goal is to ensure continuous business operation in every scenario, or simply to ensure that there is always a copy of the data, a network professional can help a business owner understand the probability of different kinds of failures, consider the possible costs of such events and choose solutions to deal with those threats in advance.

Data Backup and Disaster Prevention

Among the most common system failures is a hard disk failure, which takes with it all the data that was stored on it. Arguably the simplest precaution is manual copies of the data on other hard disks in other machines. In larger scale environments, a more formal and automated process that guarantees that such backups exist is an appropriate strategy.

When zero downtime is desirable, redundant disk "arrays" that can withstand the failure of one or more hard disks without stopping or losing data should be considered.

Generally, all businesses should implement some form of secure off-site backup data storage as a worst-case solution to the possibility of destruction of the office through fire, burglary or another form of disaster.

Fault-Tolerance
and High-Availability Networks

Backup Systems

Consider the failure of a machine, the impact it would have, the time to fix it, and the cost of preparedness. Servers and even workstations can take hours or days to fully install and configure. Perhaps it would be wise to have a backup in a somewhat ready-to-go state (warm stand-by). Backup systems are often cost-effective minimalistic substitutes designed to provide the most essential services on a temporary basis.

In cases where downtime is just not acceptable, infrastructure that includes hot stand-by systems, possibly at other geographic locations, can provide much-improved availability.

Organizations with large workstation populations and even small businesses can benefit from centralization and workstation provisioning strategies that speed up delivery of new and replacement workstations.

Backup Networks

When one relies on a single network provider, occasional interruptions in service are usually inevitable. "Always on" networks with multiple paths using different carriers greatly reduce downtime by providing uninterrupted service as long as one the networks is still online.

Data Archiving - Build Yourself a Digital Time Machine

Time travel really is possible! The majority of business data loss arises from accidental corruption by well-meaning agents. Employees make mistakes, software malfunctions, something goes wrong. It may be that there are copies of databases that were created solely for the purpose of recovering from a server failure, but what if the problem originated some time ago?

When long-standing problems with the data are discovered, it can be life-saving have snapshots of the data before the problem started - yesterday, last week, last month, and so on. When designing a disaster recovery strategy, businesses should consider that the most recent copy of the database is not sufficient to deal with problems that are not detected immediately. A backup strategy that includes keeping copies of older versions and deleted files is as close to a time machine as we are likely to encounter in this lifetime, and extremely handy when turning back the clock is the only solution.