This blog topic will attempt to describe services designed to proactively prevent data loss.

The Disaster Scenario

“I lost my Quickbooks file and I am not sure if I have a backup!“

A small business has a “relatively new, brand name, business class” workstation deployed at its main office location.  By “relatively new”, I mean 1-2 years old.  By “brand name”, I mean the good ones that you see all of the commercials for (e.g. HP, Dell, Lenovo, Apple, etc.).  By “business class”, I mean it has a CPU with 2.0+ GHz, perhaps 2+ GB of RAM and a 100+ GB hard drive - a typical desktop system that would be used in a small business office environment.  This PC is used by the office manager who is responsible for updating the general ledger entries within Quickbooks.  The company Quickbooks file is stored locally on the computer along with the office manager’s emails, many contracts and work orders as well as an industry specific software package that the company uses daily to generate new quotes for potential customers. 

On Monday morning, the office manager comes in and tries to start the computer and all that the screen says is:

No boot device, F1 to reboot or F2 to setup

After contacting several friends who are “good with computers”, the business owner decides to call a professional IT consultant.  Upon review of the hardware, the IT consultant comes to the conclusion that the hard disk drive has suffered a mechanical failure and is not accessible - all of the data, including the Quickbooks file, has been lost.  To make things worse, the last valid backup of the Quickbooks file was from two months ago ... the backups that the office manager thought were running every night were failing because of a file system permission error.  The failed backups were not noticed.

Ouch, that sucks!

Background

In my professional IT consulting experience, there is nothing more painful than having to tell a customer that their important files have been lost and cannot be recovered.  At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I have felt like a doctor giving bad news to a family member.  I have literally felt sad when I walk into a situation like the one described above.  This problem is like a terminable disease - there is nothing pleasant that can be done.  To take the drive to a data recovery expert could easily cost thousands of dollars and take weeks to recover the data.  All of the office manager’s emails are gone.  No one can use the quote software to generate new quotes.  The company’s business engine is basically stopped in its tracks.

In most cases, your company data is the core of our business operations.  To take it one step further, in my world, an even worse position to be in is to think you have the right files backed up only to find out that’s not the case.  The truth is Murphy’s Law is ALWAYS in effect.  If you think you have gaps in your backup system, you probably do.  If you are not sure that the right files are being backed up, they probably aren’t.

General Points around SMB Backup and Disaster Recovery

The good news is that data loss is avoidable.  By taking a few basic steps, your company can implement a data loss prevention policy.  As long as you have a copy of your important files, you can recover them.  Implementing a sound backup and disaster recovery system is based on the risk tolerance of the business.  A few simple business decisions need to be made.  The stake holders of the company need to determine:

• How much downtime can the company afford?
• How fast do lost files need to be restored?
• How many days in the past does the company need to be able to restore back to?

These questions sound simple enough.  The truth is, the devil is in the details.  Additionally, as I am sure you know, there is a cost penalty as these parameters change.  The faster you need to be able to restore, the more you will spend.  The longer you need to retain your files, the more you will spend.

What is a good mix of protection and value for a small business?  This question turns into a basic cost benefit analysis exercise that is unique for every business.

Key Components to a Good SMB Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan

In my opinion, the following high level bullets describe the most important components of a sound backup and disaster recovery plan.

Alternate Form of Media

It is good idea that you get your files onto a different device.  This doesn’t have to be a tape or CD-ROM.  In today’s world, you can purchase a terabyte of external storage for under $100.00.  External hard drives make excellent, low cost backup destinations.  There are certainly more expensive, feature laden solutions, but the point is, the cost of storage space should not be the barrier to entry to a sound data backup solution.

Automated

There are two ideas that form rationale behind this suggestion.  First, computers excel at repetitive tasks like performing scheduled backups.  They don’t make mistakes, forget, get sick, etc.  Secondly, once the schedule has been defined, there is little ongoing operational expense to continue the process.  When a person has to perform a manual process it is expensive and prone to errors.  Keep in mind that Murphy’s Law will sneak up and bite you when your “backup person” is out sick!

Tested

One of the biggest mistakes that small businesses make in backup and disaster recovery is they don’t ever practice performing a real recovery.  Big organizations, especially the publicly traded and governmental ones, do a much better job at this.  They practice their disaster recovery plan.  For the small business, this doesn’t mean you have to mobilize your entire workforce, take weeks off at a time and drill…but you could if you want.  The truth is, the easiest way to test a backup plan is to request a file to be restored from a previous backup.  Sometimes, this can be done in a matter of a few minutes.  As a stakeholder, ask the person on point for your backups to get a copy of the Quickbooks file from two days ago and see what happens.  Put the timer on and take note of the “workarounds” and “alternate solutions” proposed - these may be acceptable, or maybe not.

Backup and Disaster Recovery Simple Glossary of Terms

One of the biggest frustrations of small business owners is the list of complicated computer terms that you must deal with when evaluating a backup solution.  Here is a short list of terms you might run into when evaluating backup solutions.

Also called archival backup, is the type of backup where all files and folders are copied to a backup storage device.

This is different from a full or archival backup.  A differential backup is a copy of all of the files or folders that have been modified since the last backup.  There are two types of incremental backups – cumulative incremental backup and differential incremental backup.

A backup of all files and folders that have been modified since the last full backup.

A backup of all files and folders that have been modified since the last incremental or full backup.

A backup of all files and folders to a second medium (disk or tape) that is in a different physical location that the original files and folders.

Similar to offsite backup, with online data backup, the files and folders are moved to a different physical location.  Many online data backup vendors have developed software that allows customers to schedule, manage, verify and browse remote data backup facilities over the Internet.

Also called a sector-by-sector backup, a raw image backup is an exact copy of all of the sectors (used and unused) of a partition that is being backed up.

A backup and restore process that does not require any previously installed software or operating system to be present.  For example, in a bare-metal backup and restore, you could take a brand new hard drive, with nothing on it (OS, applications, etc) and restore it to the most recent backup point.

About The Author

Jimmy Hurff is the President and Co-Founder of Artis IT.  Artis IT is an IT managed services provider located in Jacksonville, Florida.  Artis IT provides outsourced network support to small and medium sized businesses in the Northeast Florida region.  Specializing in small business solutions, Artis IT provides cost effective IT and computer support for Jacksonville businesses.  Artis IT has proven backup and disaster recovery solutions for small businesses for both onsite and offsite backup solutions.  Artis IT also works directly with several best-of-breed solutions providers for online data backup.