Technology tips
StorageCraft Training Event: Disaster Recovery
This week, we’re offering a brand new training Webinar that focuses on simplifying disaster recovery. This technical training event is called, “Architect simple solutions with ShadowProtect®.”
It may seem daunting, but Disaster Recovery really doesn’t have to be complicated. In this online training seminar, we’ll walk you through a basic DR architecture. We show you how to provide local and remote protection of critical systems and data. We’ll explore fast recovery options that are already available in ShadowProtect. This training will also cover features like HeadStart Restore® and VirtualBoot™.
To sign up, visit: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/262296513.
Data Corruption in Backups
By: Scott Barnes, StorageCraft CTO
Corruption is of course a very scary word. It’s one that we hear very rarely at StorageCraft. When we have heard it, it has generally been related to hardware failure or other software failure. But when we created ShadowProtect, we have had several development rules that have prevented ShadowProtect images from suffering corruptions due to StorageCraft software.
- Backup Image Files can only be written to once. In other words, the image file is created, the backup data is written and then the image file is closed. The backup image file is never opened for write access again.
- Related to rule number one, any tool that must add data to an existing image must do it in an incremental file. For example, when mounting an image file for read-write access, all changes are stored in a separate file, the original image(s) is opened for read only access and a write buffer file is created to store all new writes.
- Only the backup data for a single volume is stored in a single file. For good or bad, our files represent only data for one volume. This is also related to rule 1. Each partition is backed up independently of each other and would require reopening an image file to add a different volume’s data.
When backups images are saved to a local drive, like an internal or USB drive, the file system is very, very good at detecting any type of write failures during a backup. If Windows did not do this, Windows would quickly cease to exist.
The possibility of corruption during a backup to local drive is very low. Have we seen it? Yes, Western Digital MyBooks don’t work well with HP machines. This was tested within and without StorageCraft and it is very repeatable. We don’t recommend the combination.
When saving backups to network shares, you are dependent on a few things, the transport and the file server. In a Windows environment network and server, we have seen very few corruption events. Windows again is very good at detecting failures. We have seen more in the NAS world. Not all NAS devices are equal. There are some very cheap NAS devices. If backups are important to you, I would avoid cheap storage. But if you do opt for the cheaper route, I would test it thoroughly with large files. There was one NAS that would only corrupt images that were between 2-4 GB, but not 5-6 GB, then again from 7-8 GB, but not from 9-10 GB. Test, test, test.
When saving to removable media such as DVD, we highly recommend you use good quality media and again, test, test, test. Cheap DVD media is cheap. Just because you’ve copied many DVD movies doesn’t mean it will work for data. Movies don’t care about corruption; they keep playing right through it. Backups do care.
If an image file is corrupt, it most likely will fail to restore. This depends a bit on where the corruption is in the file, but each part of the file is important and linked to one another so if there is corruption, ShadowProtect will probably fail to restore.
ShadowProtect mounting tools are not so picky. Even if an image is corrupt, in most cases it will mount and you should be able to retrieve some data from it. Even some of the volume recovery tools will work against a mounted volume. Corruption either happens during the backup or long after the backup. If the Backup image file verified once correctly, nothing that ShadowProtect does would corrupt that file after it has been created.
Corruption after the fact is caused by disk issues or software issues. Disk issues include sector rot and general drive failures. Most common software issues would include file system corruption where applications are allowed to write over the top of sectors that are in use, but part of an image file.
Verify run from the system that is to be restored usually picks up any corruption that could occur during the restore. A verify from another machine may not pick up issues related to corruption by the transport during restore. But we rarely see corruption issues. If we have, it has 99.99% of the time been related and traced to the hardware with events to backup the hardware failures.
It is a good idea to verify your image files from time to time. Generally, corruption issues don’t come and go. They are either already there and haven’t been exposed yet or they come and don’t leave.
Always check your event logs. Don’t let any disk related events go unexplained or un-fixed.
For additional information about solving issues with unverified ShadowProtect backup images, please visit the StorageCraft Knowledge Base.
Setting Up Your Server Backup
We get a lot of requests for best practices and recommendations for ways to set up your server environment. ShadowProtect makes it pretty easy to backup everything on your Windows servers, but there are ways to set things up so that you’re maximizing your resources and your business continuity.
So one of our technical engineers has put together a great guide that outlines some ways to configure your servers and keep them up and running. It involves backing up each Windows server with ShadowProtect Server (or ShadowProtect Small Business Server) and running ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise on your critical servers so they’re backed up onsite and offsite. This way, when there’s a business disruption — from a server crash to a category 5 hurricane — you can restore your servers, recover your data, and get your business running again.
These scenarios involve our new VirtualBoot technology, that allows you to boot a ShadowProtect backup image file into a virtual machine in a matter of a few short minutes, as well as HeadStart Restore, which allows you to restore your backups before they’re needed. You can find out more about ShadowProtect by visiting the product pages, or you’re always welcome to contact us with your questions.
Choosing a Backup Solution Provider
For small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), finding the right value added reseller (VAR) can make the difference in making your business run smoothly. Smaller businesses just don’t have the resources or the personnel to make all of the IT decisions on their own. It’s important to find a channel partner who can do (or already has done) the research for you and help you make decision about the technology that will work best in your business.
So how do you begin choosing a VAR for your business? Tech Target has a great article about the steps you need to take before you make any decisions. They also talked to Greg Schulz, an analyst at Storage IO, who gave some great advice when you seek out a reseller.
“Interview them!” urged Schulz. “That is what you need to do to begin to understand their capabilities. If you were going to hire someone to be on your staff to do design optimization and improve backup you would do the same thing.” Furthermore, he advised SMBs to try to meet some of the people who would be involved in delivering services. “The more you plan to rely on a VAR, the more you should want to know them and their people. Their skill sets and ability to provide knowledge transfer are key,” he said.
The article lists some specific questions to ask as you make your evaluation. In particular, you’ll want to find out what kind of backup software they recommend and if that solution is specifically designed with SMBs in mind.
Setting up a Network
If you’ve ever thought about setting up a network at home or even been so ambitious as to set up a small office network, you know that it isn’t simple or straight forward. Getting everything running smoothly requires time, patience and several bottles of aspirin.
PC Magazine recently put together a how-to guide giving you some tips and tricks to make the process a little smoother. This guide explains the kind of storage to get and how to protect it.
You can set up your own local backup system given enough external storage space. If you’re going to take this course, we recommend creating not just a backup, but a whole drive image – that is, a backup of not just your data, but your entire PC – everything from your files to all the tweaks you make to your OS and apps so that they perform the way you want them to. The best software for this, hands down, is ShadowProtect Desktop 4.0.
Check out the entire article and pick up a few pointers. You may even have some of your own that the article doesn’t highlight. You can always share them here and give others the benefit of your wisdom and experience.
Creating a Recovery CD
If you’ve recently purchased StorageCraft ShadowProtect for the first time, you may not know how to create a recovery CD. You’ll need a CD with the StorageCraft Recovery Environment in case you ever need to restore a system — whether it’s a server or a desktop/laptop. If you downloaded the software from the StorageCraft Web site, you received some instructions on how to do this, but you may not have understood why you need to do this now. Basically it boils down to this: if you wait until you need the recovery disk (say, following a catastrophic failure), it will be a little more difficult to create the CD. It’s always so much easier to have it handy before the disaster.
So here’s what to do. After downloading ShadowProtect, load a blank CD into your CD/DVD drive. Now navigate to the folder where you saved your ShadowProtect 4 download, unzip the file and you’ll see a .ISO image file. Open your CD burning software and then browse to the .ISO file and burn this to your CD. Once it’s burned, make sure you label it ShadowProtect Recovery CD and put it in a safe place.
Most CD burning software are able to create a CD from an .ISO file, but there are some free tools available to do this, too: ISOTool.exe is a tool included with ShadowProtect and Active @ISO Burner is a free tool you can download at: http://www.ntfs.com/iso_burner_free.htm.
Managing Exchange Email Backup, Recovery and Migration
Small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) have unique challenges when it comes to backing up, restoring, searching or migrating their Exchange database (EDB) files. These challenges are often pricey and protracted – issues that can bring productivity to a screeching halt.
Not only is it important to backup the entire server, but it is also important to have a way to restore mailboxes and individual e-mail messages and attachments quickly and easily. This has been a complex problem because current Exchange backup solutions don’t address all requirements from complete restore of an Exchange database down to the granular recovery of an individual e-mail message or e-mail attachment.
Another issue for SMBs is complying with regulatory or legal demands regarding the production of e-mail records. Searching e-mail databases for individual messages based on specific criteria can be an incredibly time-consuming task that most small businesses can ill afford. Restoring individual databases, then painstakingly searching for keywords, messages to certain domains or recipients, messages sent on specified dates or with specified subjects can take days – or even weeks – to complete.
Finally, upgrading to a new Exchange server can frustrate IT staff with its complexity and potential for disaster. The migration process can place a heavy load on SMBs with limited IT resources.
Download this white paper to learn more about each of these issues, why they are important for SMBs to address and how to resolve them while maximizing business continuity and minimizing IT resources necessary to accomplish the demands of maintaining Exchange servers.
Virtual Backup
Many SMBs are flirting with virtualization these days. It isn’t just for large enterprises any more. That’s because it can help you maximize storage or give you a way to keep that server running while you’re repairing your physical hardware. In any case, a lot of people are looking into the ways virtualized storage can be a lifesaver. Fortunately, as a ShadowProtect user, you won’t have to change your backup solution if you decide to make the switch to the virtual world. That’s because ShadowProtect not only backs up physical systems, it backs up virtual systems as well.
In addition, ShadowProtect has the added advantage of allowing you to migrate from physical environments to virtual ones, and from virtual to physical — or any combination of the two (P2P, P2V, V2V or V2P). The cool Hardware Independent Restore™ technology in ShadowProtect allows you to change your environment no matter what kind of hardware you’re switching to. So upgrade that server without fear.
Plus, you’ll want to check out the new virtualization tools in ShadowProtect 4.0. The newest version of ShadowProtect has two really cool new features. The first is VirtualBoot™, which lets you right-click on a ShadowProtect backup image file and boot it as a virtual machine, usually in about two minutes (no matter how large the server). Another feature is the new Virtual Converter in the Backup Image tool, which lets you convert a ShadowProtect backup image into a VM — either .VHD or .VMDK.
If you’re exploring how to make the most of virtual technology to maximize your storage, be sure to see how ShadowProtect will help you get all your data into the virtual world — and to continue to protect it once you’re there.
Upgrading Your Server
Tech Republic has a great server upgrade list of things to think about before you start the big task. The article starts off with the most important step – backup. The real key is to make sure you not only have the data, but everything on the server.
When upgrades go south, disk images can help recover not only data but a server’s complex configuration in a hurry.
If a server upgrade is in your near future, check out this great list, and make sure you start out with ShadowProtect Server (or ShadowProtect Small Business Server). The Hardware Independent Restore (HIR) technology helps make upgrading your server much easier. You can use HIR to migrate to new hardware or even virtual hardware without worry.
If you’re planning a server upgrade to new hardware, you’ll also want to read this Hardware Independent Restore article in the Knowledge Base at the StorageCraft Support Center.
Simple Way to Avoid Data Loss
We’ve been saying it, and you’ve heard it time and again: Back it up! It’s the sure-fire way to avoid the nightmare of a fried hard disk. A recent article on Gizmodo.com ( The Five Stages of Data Loss Grief ) is a perfect reminder of the whole reason to back up your data — to avoid the disaster altogether. The article is pretty funny, taking you through the stages you go through, much the same way that therapy takes you through the stages of grieving the loss of a loved one. The problem here is that this is an issue that’s entirely avoidable. A simple backup plan will eliminate the need to go through any of these stages. Instead, you’ll experience something like this:
1. Oh, no! My hard drive crashed.
2. Boy am I glad I backed up my data. Now it will just take a few minutes to restore my system.
Now that wasn’t difficult at all, was it? The reality is that while technology is great, it’s also prone to failure. Hard drives die, so back them up.
If you don’t already have one, buy backup software (like ShadowProtect, of course) that you can automate. Install it and set up a schedule. How often should you back up your data? The answer lies in how often you’re making changes to your drive. For most of us, a few times a day is more than sufficient, especially if your backup is running in the background so you don’t notice any change in your efficiency. But if you’re a power user or writing the great American novel, you may want to schedule backups several times an hour. Save your backups to a removable hard drive and then set it up to e-mail you in the event your backup fails. That may be your first indication that your hard drive is dying.
Next, make sure you have a separate backup of your hard drive saved in a remote location; update your off-site backup periodically. You may feel secure taking your off-site drive to a friend’s house for safekeeping. But if you’re protecting secrets that could bring down nations, you may want to secure that backup in a location such as a safety deposit box. If your friend’s home burns down (or the bank floods), after empathizing with your friend, make a new backup.
These steps may take a little time to plan and accomplish, but in the long run, you’ll sleep better and be much happier when your drive fails. Think of all the time you’ll save then.
2010 Storage Trend – Moving from Tape to Disk
Every year the storage analysts try to predict what the big trends will be for the coming year. They base their analysis on polling data and other research. Many of them are specific and others are more general. Enterprise Strategy Group’s 2010 list has some trends that are right up our alley. Here is one highlight:
#1. The shift from tape to disk: the modernization of backup continues.
From our perspective, that’s something everyone should have done years ago. But there are a lot of businesses that are still using tape for all of their backup. If you’ve already made the switch, you know that tape has problems from start to finish. Not only is it slow in recording the backup, it’s slow in restoring from the backup — that is, if you’re even able to use the backup. Disk is cheaper, faster and very reliable. Plus you can verify your disk-based backup quickly and easily with many MD5 verification tools. In the event of a disaster, recovering from a disk-based backup will not cause you hours and hours of frustration.
If you decide to keep your tape backups, we have a betamax, some 8-track tapes and a phone answering machine we’d like to sell you, too.
Other trends highlighted in the ESG report include the changing role of virtualization, cloud-based backup and the changing attitude toward backing up enterprise desktops and laptops. Check out the entire ESG list for yourself and see if you’ll be facing any of these issues for the year.
What’s Your Second Line of Defense Against a Virus?
The headlines are always scary: “Conficker Worm Strikes Police Department,” “Botnet Attack Launched on Government Web Sites” and “Computer Virus Brings Down Hospital.” The way viruses, malware, spyware and denial of service attacks are striking businesses on a regular basis show that they’ve almost become a way of life for us. These problems constantly put us on the defense, so it’s a good idea to make sure you’re doing all you can:
- Implement solid anti-virus software across your business. Make sure virus definition files are updated frequently for all your users.
- Put up firewalls and make sure they’re adequate for the latest kinds of attacks.
- Educate your users. Tell them that the Web sites they visit — even reputable ones — might be infected. So they shouldn’t download software unless they’re sure it’s safe.
- Make sure you’re backups are up to date.
That last one may seem strange, but it’s something you can do that proactively addresses the next possible attack. After all, there is no “current” defense for the next virus, adware or malware.
Consider that your backup can be another kind of “anti-virus” tool. With a point-in-time solution like ShadowProtect, you can recover your server (or a desktop or laptop) to a known, good state before the attack took place. Plus, your backup should allow you to restore quickly, otherwise it’s just as much a problem as the virus that took you down. Waiting around while you restore terabytes of data, isn’t an option. You need a solution that can get you up and running in a matter of minutes, not hours.
The next time you’re updating your anti-virus software or fine-tuning your firewall, consider that you might want to make sure you have a plan in place in case your first line of defense doesn’t hold.
StorageCraft ShadowProtect in PC World
StorageCraft ShadowProtect is mentioned in a success story in PC World about virtualizing blade servers. PC Troubleshooters in Rhode Island is using ShadowProtect Server as part of its backup and disaster recovery solution to protect the systems and data on the servers in their data center.
We created our own backup and disaster recovery system by deploying a network-attached storage device onsite and using StorageCraft ShadowProtect software to image servers on an hourly basis. Each image is encrypted and sent to two separate storage facilities in Maryland and Colorado.
Check out this case study and find out how you might be able to use StorageCraft ShadowProtect as part of your backup and disaster recovery offering, whether you’re protecting physical servers, virtual servers, or both.
Top Priorities for 2010? Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
SearchStorage.com asked enterprise data storage managers what their priorities are for this year and here are the top three responses: data backup (48%), adding capacity (37%) and disaster recovery (DR) (36%). A free subscription is required to view the whole story.
Playing catch-up with capacity tends to create a ripple effect through storage environments, affecting nearly everything from data protection to new technology implementations. But that’s not to suggest that storage managers will just be trying to catch their breath in 2010 — most still have fairly ambitious to-do lists involving some of the newest storage technologies available.
The survey also found that storage managers will be looking at new technology to solve some of their storage issues. In particular, they are planning to focus on cloud computing and data deduplication to manage the storage capacity they currently have.
Eliminating Backup Windows – for Physical and Virtual Servers
The e-mail ad touted a “brand new solution” that solves the problem that’s overwhelmed IT teams for years — completing backup jobs in the short amount of time available, the “backup window.” The ad said the company had found a way to incorporate imaging technology to eliminate lengthy backup jobs.
The only problem is, this isn’t new, as ShadowProtect users can attest. Whether you’re backing up physical systems or virtual systems, ShadowProtect takes point-in-time snapshots of the server’s operating system and data. Then, while your server remains online, ShadowProtect creates a backup image of everything in your server environment.
The scheduler in ShadowProtect lets you specify how frequently you run your backup. For example, you can set it up to run a full backup every evening, and take incremental backup images throughout the day — even as frequently as every 15 minutes.
So while the problem of shorter backup windows may be an old one, the solution isn’t necessarily new. And even if you’re planning to migrate to virtual systems — something you can also accomplish with ShadowProtect — you don’t need to change your backup system just because you’re moving into the virtual world. You can do protect both physical and virtual systems with ShadowProtect.
Corporate World Is Getting the “Backup” Message
It looks like the corporate world may finally be getting the message: backup is important. A new IDC report says that more than half (53%) of all corporations they surveyed have deployed centralized backup software to protect company PCs. That’s a big increase over previous surveys. The report also shows that about a third of companies (32.5%) are still relying on individual employees to backup their own computers.
The report also found that the larger the company, the more likely it is to have centralized PC backup. Plus, it isn’t just regulatory worries about backing up company data that have corporations worried. They’re also concerned about the possibility of hardware failure.
Disaster Recovery Planning for SMBs
Smaller businesses sometimes think they’re so small, they don’t really need to have a disaster recovery plan. That’s especially true in difficult economic times because anything that can get postponed until a later day gets put on the back burner. Bring it up in a discussion about the need for business continuity and you’ll probably hear, “I know, I know, I know. But I just can’t afford it right now.” Unfortunately, SMBs are the least able to recover following a disaster because they don’t have the financial capital to survive a crisis. In this economic climate, a little preventive planning can mean the difference between surviving and thriving and having to close your doors.
Now the question is where to start with your planning. While a DR plan should start with protecting your employees, it also should encompass your facilities, your systems and your data. This month, SearchSMBStorage.com has a couple of DR Planning articles (subscription required) that may provide insights on how to begin your DR plan. In addition, you’ll want to check out InfoWorld.com for some insights into using snapshot technology for DR.
Storage snapshots are among the best data protection features that any server or storage platform can offer. The ability to quickly and easily roll back to a previous point in time without pulling out a tape or copying data puts a healthy distance between you and disaster.
We won’t argue with that advice, of course, since snapshots are the technology powering ShadowProtect. But no matter how your SMB customers plan to protect their businesses, the best advice you can give them is the first step: start with a plan.
Disaster Recovery in a Virtual World
Virtualization can bring a lot of business benefits – lower cost and greater flexibility, in particular. But it can also pose some problems. In particular, how easy or difficult is it to protect virtualized systems and data?
That’s where the award-winning ShadowProtect line of disk-based backup and disaster recovery software can help. ShadowProtect Desktop, ShadowProtect Server, ShadowProtect Small Business Server and ShadowProtect IT Edition are all compatible with virtual systems – such as VMware or Microsoft Virtual Server.
Not only does ShadowProtect provide Hardware Independent Restore (H.I.R.), it can also convert physical machines to virtual machines (P2V), virtual to virtual (V2V) and virtual to physical.
If you’re trying to find out how to use ShadowProtect with your virtual machines, we have a lot of information in the StorageCraft Support Center. There you’ll find all kinds of tools to help you protect your virtual world. For example, we have a guide that will take you through the process of restoring a virtual machine. There are also articles that show you how to perform H.I.R. or how to use VMware Server or VMware Converter as disaster recovery.
To find out more, visit the StorageCraft Web site and type “virtual” into the search box.
Business Continuity
It’s called “disaster recovery” because it can help you get access to your systems and data following catastrophes of all kinds. But DR can also keep your business going following those everyday mishaps – something as simple as accidentally deleting a critical file or as complex as seeing your RAID server crash. Having a way to keep your business going in the event of a minor accident should be part of your overall disaster recovery plan.
That’s where StorageCraft solutions can help. The ShadowProtect line of award-winning backup and disaster recovery software for Windows systems and data helps you have a worry-free computing environment. Once you install ShadowProtect and create backup schedules on your servers and desktops, you have a copy of everything, in case you ever need it. With incremental (or delta) backups that you can take every 15 minutes, you can even ensure you have copies of minor changes you make throughout the day. Just need a specific file? You right click on the backup image file from your last backup, mount it as the next available drive letter, then simply navigate to the folder with the missing file. Now you just copy it – or drag and drop it to where you want it.
Disaster recovery software can make the difference between something being just a minor hiccup in a busy day, or a major problem that brings business to a screeching halt. Find out more about ShadowProtect solutions and see if they can help your business continuity.
Desktop Backup Tips
With backup software like ShadowProtect, it’s very easy to have a copy of everything on your hard drive. But what’s the best way to make sure you’re backing up what you need to? For PC users, here are some tips that will give you a little peace of mind.
Once you install ShadowProtect, it’s a good idea to set a backup schedule right away, which is very easy using the Backup Wizard. Open the Backup Wizard, click Next, then check the volume (drive) you want backed up. For most people, this will be the C:\ volume — the primary drive with your system, programs and data. If you have your hard drive partitioned to separate your personal files and data, you’ll want to back up that secondary partition, too. Click Next.
Now you need to choose a location to hold your backup images — such as a removable disk drive that you’re dedicating to hold your images or over a network to a user folder. No matter where your location is, you’ll need to make sure you have enough disk space to hold your backup image files. Click the Browse button and navigate to the specific backup location; you may want to create a backup folder for this purpose (e.g.: JanesLaptop, JohnsBackupImages). Click Next.
Now you can specify your backup schedule. It’s a good idea to take a full backup every week and additional incremental backups through the workday, so click Weekly and click on a day and choose a time for your Full backup. Now choose how often you’d like to make incremental images which will backup the changes between your full backups. For most people, hourly incrementals is sufficient. Once you’ve created the schedule you like, click Next.
On the Options screen, you can choose to add a password to your image files, compress your image files or choose Advanced options. One thing you might want to do is click on the Retention tab and create a Retention policy, which will help free up storage, if your space is limited.
After you’ve made your selections, click Next. You’ll see a summary of your Backup Job, so check it over and see if you need to make any changes. Check the Execute Now box to run your initial backup right away.
Now you’re set. If you have any questions along the way, make sure you consult the ShadowProtect User Guide or visit the StorageCraft Support Center. You can also find additional information about ShadowProtect backup software at www.ShadowProtect.com.