Posts Tagged ‘disaster recovery’
StorageCraft Partners With Highly Reliable Systems: New End-to-End Backup Solution
Alliance delivers best-in-class backup and disaster recovery solutions
DRAPER, Utah, U.S.A., – Nov. 8, 2011 – StorageCraft Technology Corporation, a provider of best-in-class backup, disaster recovery, system migration and data protection solutions for servers, desktops and laptops, and Highly Reliable Systems, a manufacturer of backup and disaster recovery systems, have partnered to provide a complete end-to-end backup and disaster recovery solution for the SMB market.
“The ideal backup and disaster recovery infrastructure demands both innovative software and reliable storage devices. This alliance with Highly Reliable Systems gives small and medium businesses the ability to create an environment that ensures fast, flexible and reliable recovery and restoration of its data, at a price point that makes sense,” said Curt James, vice president of marketing and business development at StorageCraft.
StorageCraft and Highly Reliable Systems share the goal of making it profitable for value-added resellers (VARs) and managed service providers (MSPs) to deliver backup, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions. Highly Reliable Systems manufactures quality, hot pluggable, disk-based backup and storage systems designed with easy off-site capabilities with removable drives. StorageCraft® ShadowProtect® provides best-in-class backup and recovery software, and coupled with Highly Reliable Systems backup devices, it creates a simple, affordable backup and disaster recovery solution for SMBs.
Highly Reliable Systems’ hardware platform works seamlessly with the entire StorageCraft product line to combine backup procedures that are easy to manage with the ability to move backup images off-site with removable drives. Customers can also leverage the solution to replicate their backup data to a remote data center of their choice for added redundancy and protection against catastrophic disasters.
“We found a natural partnership early on with StorageCraft. As a leading U.S. manufacturer of storage optimized for backup, we found a real value in being able to refer resellers to a quality product. When you pair our devices with their software, you have a reliable disaster recovery solution capable of backing up over 400GB per hour and restoring in just a few minutes,” said Jeff Bowling, vice president of business development for Highly Reliable Systems.
About StorageCraft Technology Corporation
StorageCraft Technology Corporation provides best-in-class backup, disaster recovery, system migration and data protection solutions for servers, desktops and laptops. StorageCraft delivers software products that reduce downtime, improve security and stability for systems and data and lower the total cost of ownership for servers, desktops and laptops. For more information, visit www.storagecraft.com.
About Highly Reliable Systems
Highly Reliable Systems, Inc. is a US manufacturer of backup and disaster recovery hardware solutions based in Reno, NV. Highly Reliable Systems specializes in engineering backup and recovery devices that use fully enclosed, protected and hot swappable hard drives, which allow for extremely fast backup and restore and also provide an easy way to physically transport data and backup images offsite.
www.high-rely.com
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StorageCraft and ShadowProtect are trademarks of StorageCraft Technology Corporation. Other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
New ShadowProtect Virtual Pack
When we announced ShadowProtect Virtual last week, a lot of you told us you loved the new pricing and licensing options, but something was missing: a server 3-pack license. We kicked the idea around a bit, discussed why we should (or shouldn’t) do it, and then came to a decision. We’re adding a server 3-pack license.
It’s going to take us a couple of days to add SKUs and make sure all of our ducks are in a row, but by week’s end, we hope to have the server 3-pack available on our own Web store and through Lifeboat distribution (in North America). We want you to be able to standardize all of your servers with one backup and disaster recovery solution.
This also gives us a chance to say that we really do value your feedback, and we do listen to what you have to say. We hope you’ll continue to let us know where we can improve our products and our programs. We would like to say “Thank you” to those of you who did take the time to share your opinion and add your two cents. We’ll keep on listening.
StorageCraft offers free download to businesses in Japan
Like so many people around the world, we were moved by the tragic events caused by the Touhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. We felt strongly that we should do whatever we could to help the people affected by the disaster.
Since StorageCraft makes disaster recovery products for small and medium-sized businesses, it made sense for us to offer our ShadowProtect IT Edition software as a free download to businesses in Japan that need help in recovering their IT systems and data. Also, as rolling power blackouts continue in areas of Japan beyond those affected directly by the earthquake and tsunami, the software helps businesses protect their Windows servers and workstations from system failure or data loss resulting from planned and unplanned power losses
It’s important to us to cultivate ties to the communities of our customers; when our customers suffer from the effects of tragic events, so do we. We have a special place in our hearts for the people of Japan, as we are in the process of establishing an office there and have just hired our first local employee. We feel that giving back to the communities where we live and work also helps our own family and friends.
We’ll continue to do what we can to support and care for those who are in need, and we wish the people of Japan all the best for a safe and speedy recovery.
- Ken Kilgore, senior director, Asia Pacific
MSP University Boot Camps
We’re lacing up our training boots and hitting the road this year for MSP University Boot Camps across the United States. We’re not exactly the drill sergeant in this analogy, but we are offering some great training sessions for managed service providers (MSPs). We’re working with one of our strategic partners, eFolder, to provide MSPs with great information on how they can offer disaster recovery and cloud backup services to their customers.
You can learn more about it in the press release: http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20110202007068/en/StorageCraft-Sponsors-MSP-University-Boot-Camps.
Expanded Sales and Technical Training
The new year is off to an excellent start at StorageCraft. We’re hiring new sales and support staff and we’re expanding our training to help you more. We’ll be revamping and revising things over the next few months, but starting this week we’re offering brand-new training sessions.
This Thursday, we’re beginning our weekly series offering in-depth technical product training for StorageCraft solutions. This week’s Webinar is: “Working with StorageCraft Support: The fastest path to resolution.” We will also offer our sales training introduction, “How to Win More Business with a Better Disaster Recovery Solution” on Wednesday. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll have addition technical and sales training sessions.
To learn more about upcoming Webinars or to sign up for a specific training event, please visit the StorageCraft Events Center. And if you have a suggestion for a specific type of training event that you’d like to have, please let us know.
Recorded Training Sessions
If you missed out on our recent technical and sales training sessions, it isn’t too late to catch these Webinars. We’ve recorded them so that you can watch them when you have a little spare time.
To watch our deep-dive technical training, “Unravel the mysteries of ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise,” visit: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/498164689.
To watch our sales training Webinar, “How to win more business with a better Disaster Recovery solution,” visit: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/633511585.
Both Webinars are free, but you’ll need to enter your e-mail address to view them.
Sales Training: Winning More Business with a Better DR Solution
It may seem like rocket science, but it isn’t hard to protect your customers’ critical data and make a profit for your business. You just need the tools in order to do it. The first is a great disaster recovery (DR) solution. The second tool is a training event to show you how to sell it. Well, done and done.
StorageCraft is offering a FREE sales training Webinar next Wednesday to show you how to win more business with a better DR solution: StorageCraft ShadowProtect. This event will show you why it’s critical for you to have a simple, RELIABLE backup and DR solution to offer your customers and how to sell it to them.
Register for this complimentary Webinar right away, because space is limited.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/618569697
Winning More Business with a Better DR Solution
Wednesday, December 8
12:00 – 1:00 p.m. MST (2:00 EST, 1:00 CST, 11:00 PST)
Success Story: Mann Made Group
If you’re a solution provider with customers in remote locations, you know what it’s like to deal with the special challenges associated with out-of-the-way places. In the middle of the night, in bad weather — sometimes even on a normal day — it’s hard to ensure business continuity for far-flung regions. But we have ways of making that problem a little easier to deal with.
Mann Made Group is a financial services firm that’s headquartered on the Isle of Man. They need to make sure their customers have access to financial information all the time. So they contracted with PC Mann, an IT services provider to help make sure that business is always running smoothly. PC Mann uses StorageCraft ShadowProtect to help power its business continuity offering for customers. This way, PC Mann can give Mann Made Group both on-site backup, for quick recovery in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure, or off-site backup, in case of a disaster like a fire or flood.
With ShadowProtect’s VirtualBoot technology PC Mann can get one of Mann Made Group’s servers backup and and running as a virtual machine in just a few minutes; 30 minutes for a full bare metal restore. From the press release announcing the relationship, here’s what Alan Hollingsworth, Managing Director and Founder of Mann Made Group, had to say:
“We are a services business and any loss of IT systems is damaging to our reputation and our clients. The solution from PC Mann is effectively belt and braces and gives us a business continuity strategy that goes much further than other small firms in our industry.”
For the last 18 months, PC Mann has helped a growing list of clients replace legacy tape with StorageCraft disk based disaster recovery solutions.
“The cost of a full second site or server replication system is still prohibitive for most small business,” explains Andy Heeney, Managing Director of PC Mann, “We choose to partner with StorageCraft as it allows us to remove the complexity of managing server images and virtualised recovery servers and allows us to provide a reliable and cost effective service that requires little on-site management expertise or expensive hardware.” PC Mann is experiencing growing demand for its business continuity services across the island. “Smaller organisations rely on IT to give them a competitive advantage and the loss of applications for just a few hours can lead to customers switching suppliers and long term damage. Solutions like StorageCraft pay for themselves in the equivalent of just a few hours of downtime.”
Powered by StorageCraft
Two of our partners announced they are working together with us on an offering that will make life a whole lot easier for MSPs. LabTech and Doyenz will be using StorageCraft ShadowProtect technology to power a new offering that allows server failover in the cloud. This makes it a whole lot easier for MSPs to monitor their systems with LabTech, backup their systems with ShadowProtect and failover to a virtual machine on-site or off-site in the Doyenz Shadowcloud.
Here’s more about this “Freemium” offering from the press release:
“MSPs need an efficient method of protecting their customers’ information and monitoring their systems to prevent problems before they happen,” said Curt James, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at StorageCraft. “This strategic relationship between LabTech, Doyenz and StorageCraft not only allows MSPs to keep tabs on servers and resolve issues before they become problems, it also allows them to backup and failover systems in the cloud, in case of a catastrophe that can’t be prevented.”
“By partnering with LabTech and StorageCraft, we are proud to offer the channel a truly innovative, end-to-end disaster recovery solution, previously only available to enterprise market,” said Eric Webster, VP of Sales and Marketing for Doyenz. “Managed Service Providers can now ensure complete business continuity and manage their clients remotely with LabTech—and make significant profit margins while doing so.”
“The formed partnerships with Doyenz and StorageCraft, and the newly developed Freemium offer is a huge benefit to our LabTech partners and the entire MSP industry,” said Matt Nachtrab, CEO of LabTech Software. “LabTech Software and its partnerships with other leading industry solution providers like Doyenz and StorageCraft is giving today’s MSPs the needed toolsets to help their IT businesses become more efficient, productive and profitable.”
This gives MSPs a lot of options for backup and disaster recovery. You can read the entire press release here.
In the Cloud
StorageCraft is hanging out at Cloud Expo this week. Not only are we a sponsor, but we’re also heading up a breakout session on backup, disaster recovery and system migration in the cloud. Basically, we’re showing off the many ways you can use ShadowProtect in the cloud. So if you’re at the Cloud Expo this week, be sure to swing by our booth or our presentation.
If you didn’t know that ShadowProtect plays well in the cloud, we can tell you that it’s the backup and disaster recovery solution of choice for a lot of providers — companies we’re happy to partner with. Did you know that Zenith Infotech’s BDR solution is powered by StorageCraft ShadowProtect? So is the BusinessContinuitySuite — part of our relationship with Symform. We’re also working with Doyenz as part of their Shadowcloud solution. We also partner with GCloud3 and many others.
You may have seen one of our presentations where we mention that our technology is on millions of systems around the world. This is why. So many other people trust StorageCraft solutions to help power their own offerings. It’s just another reason why you can rely on ShadowProtect to protect your systems and data.
On the Road Again
In North America, the leaves are changing color, the days are getting shorter, there’s a decided nip in the air, and we’re headed out to another trade show. It must be autumn. The next few weeks we’ll be busy meeting many of you at upcoming tech events across the U.S. and Canada.
This weekend, we’ll are in Las Vegas for one of our favorite trade shows – SMB Nation. Harry Brelsford always brings together a fantastic group of the industry’s best. We’re holding several different break-out meetings, including a technical deep dive of ShadowProtect ImageManage Enterprise, as well as co-branded seminars with two of our cloud computing partners: Symform and Doyenz.
If you’re still getting your feet wet in the cloud, so to speak, you may want to attend both sessions. They may give you some ideas on how to handle your cloud backups. Fortunately, ShadowProtect plays very well in the cloud, so you can use it to save your backups in the cloud no matter which solution you choose.
Next week, we’ll be heading north to Calgary, sponsoring ChannelNext in Alberta, Canada. We’ve been partnering with ChannelNext and TechnoPlanet Productions to tell Canadian solution providers about ShadowProtect. ChannelNext is October 25 in Calgary.
In early November, we’ll be sponsoring Cloud Computing Expo in Santa Clara, California. This will be our first time there. As I mentioned, ShadowProtect really plays well in the cloud, so we think this will be a great opportunity for StorageCraft. Cloud Computing Expo is November 1-4.
In mid-November, we’ll be back in Las Vegas where we’re participating in another Everything Channel XChange event. This year, XChange Tech Innovators is November 10-12.
We hope your fall is a little more relaxed than ours, but we’re definitely not complaining! It’s good to be busy and it’s great to tell people about ShadowProtect.
Visit us as MSPWorld Conference & Expo
StorageCraft will be participating in the MSPWorld Conference and Expo next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. If you’re planning to attend, please make sure you stop by and say hello. We’ll be talking about ShadowProtect 4, of course, because that’s what we do.
We’ll also be telling people about the new features that help businesses get back up and running even faster than ever. Can you recover a 1TB server in five minutes or less? We can! And we’ll show you how you can, too. Our booth is #853. Even if you’re already sold on ShadowProtect, we would love to hear from you.
To find out more visit the MSPWorld Conference and Expo Web site http://www.mspnews.com for all of the details.
Business Continuity Suite Web Training
Today’s Business Continuity Suite Web training is underway, but there are still a couple of opportunities to sign up. These free, one-hour Webinars will show you how easy it is to offer your SMB customers simple, affordable cloud backup with the Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform. Next week, we’ll have two training session, on Tuesday and on Thursday, so you can learn how StorageCraft ShadowProtect and the Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud can make it easy for you provide cloud backup to your customers. In addition to easy implementation, the Business Continuity Suite is also very cost effective. Hard to believe? The free Web training will explain why it’s time to move your customers to the cloud.
Here are some benefits of the Business Continuity Suite:
* Rapid recovery
* Restore to bare metal, to dissimilar hardware or to and from virtual environments.
* Backup near-line and in the cloud
* Encryption of backup files using 256-bit military grade AES algorithm
* Redundant storage of secure files in multiple locations and around the world.
In addition to saving money, the Business Continuity Suite is also fast and extremely secure. You won’t have to worry about unwanted intruders stealing you or your customers’ data.
The upcoming online training events are Tuesday, September 14 and Thursday, September 16. Check out the Business Continuity Suite Web site to find out more, and to sign up for a Webinar.
Analyst’s view of the Business Continuity Suite
StorageCraft and Symform zoom into online disaster recovery and business continuity
Partnership between software vendors for MSP storage services
By Deni Connor
Senior Analyst
Storage Strategies NOW
September 2010
Data protection and recovery software developer StorageCraft and cloud services provider Symform moved into the world of cloud-based disaster recovery and business continuity with a recent partnership in which Symform will be a platform for protecting StorageCraft ShadowProtect images.
The Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform allows Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to offer their customers backup and disaster recovery as a cloud-based storage offering. Using ShadowProtect™ technology, MSPs save backup images onsite and offsite, via the Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud™ to enable near-line and cloud-based disaster recovery.
Simply, the Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform allows ShadowProtect image-level backups to be securely distributed across other small and mid-sized businesses and among its IT service providers in a cooperative and shared storage fashion in order to protect it and ensure its recoverability.
StorageCraft and Symform are among the first vendors to craft such a deal, which provides their MSP partners and their SMB customers with an affordable and easily implemented means of disaster recovery.
Market background
In the SMB market, although 50% of businesses have a local backup strategy, they often do not have an affordable and efficient means of moving data offsite for protection in the event of a disaster. They may shuttle tapes offsite or they may use an online backup service such as EMC MozyPro or Carbonite, whose pricing is based on a capacity of storage stored. An SMB will soon find that these methods for protecting data and providing business continuity are too error-prone, cumbersome to administer and time-consuming means to recover data quickly. And, they are expensive – online backup services can cost almost $400 a month to protect even just one file server.
Enter the Business Continuity Suite
StorageCraft has partnered with Symform to use its distributed storage system across small and mid-sized businesses and their IT storage service providers. Here’s how the Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform works.
StorageCraft ShadowProtect Server™, ShadowProtect Small Business Server™ or ShadowProtect Desktop™ creates an encrypted, image-based backup of a designated system. This series of differential and incremental point-in-time backup image files are then stored in locally hosted folders. The Symform Node software, which is installed on one computer in the customer’s network, is pointed at these local folders, where it monitors them for file adds or changes. It then automatically mirrors the adds and changes made to local storage to the cloud, where it creates a duplicate file structure.
Each StorageCraft image file is reduced to a series of 64MB blocks, which are then encrypted using AES-256 encryption algorithms. These 64MB blocks are then shredded locally into 1MB fragments. Using an erasure encoding algorithm called Reed-Solomon, 32 parity fragments are added to every 64, resulting in 96 fragments. Dubbed RAID-96™ by Symform, any 64 of the 96 segments can recreate the original block, thereby guaranteeing recoverability and high-availability.
All 96 fragments are distributed using a random statistical model to 96 participating Nodes in the Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud. An application called Symform Cloud Control™, which runs at Amazon Cloud Services (EC2) acts as a traffic controller, tells the local machine where to place each of the fragments.
When the Symform Node is configured, the end-user or MSP determines how much local disk space it plans to contribute to the cloud. This can be disk space at a local office or that of a MSP. An SMB or its MSP simply needs to contribute as much disk space as the disk space they want to consume with StorageCraft image-level backups.
Channel impact
The Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform is a completely channel-focused program, with pricing determined by StorageCraft and Symform MSPs. It makes disaster recovery practical for SMBs and at much less cost – approximately $50 per month per protected server.
The solution lets MSPs provide disaster recovery and business continuity services without a huge outlay for business continuity infrastructure. By simply donating disk space to the Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud, the MSP can reap the advantages of acting as a storage services provider (SSP).
SSG-NOW Assessment
StorageCraft’s and Symform’s approach to cloud-based business continuity is a shoo-in for the small and mid-sized business, which is faced with expensive and often unreliable solutions for cloud enablement. The MSP focus of this announcement is close to perfect for the SMB who does business with a particular MSP because of the customer’s inability or disinclination to provide IT resources and because of its relative inexperience with technology. The Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform is priced right for the MSP market – at $50 per protected server, it provides an affordable, easy for the MSP to implement alternative to other inefficient cloud-based backup and recovery solutions on the market.
Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform
Looking for a way to have your cloud and still make money, too? We announced our new joint cloud backup venture today, the Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform. The news announcement highlights our partnership and how MSPs can use the Business Continuity Suite to backup their customers’ systems and data near-line and off-site — without it costing an arm and a leg.
In the next few weeks, Symform and StorageCraft will offer Web-based training courses so you can learn how the Business Continuity Suite works and how to set it up to get the most benefit for your customers. Basically, you use StorageCraft ShadowProtect technology to backup servers, desktops and laptops and then save the point-in-time backup images to the Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud.
The Business Continuity Suite will help you provide the following:
• Get systems up and running quickly after a catastrophic failure.
• Backup on-site and replicate to the cloud for flexible disaster recovery options.
• Restore to bare metal, to dissimilar hardware or to and from virtual environments.
• Multiple levels of encryption and military grade security of backup files to prevent intrusion.
• Schedule full and incremental backups to be saved automatically on-site and in the cloud.
• Contribute excess storage and get valuable cloud storage in return.
• Rapid recovery of files, folders or your entire system should a disaster occur.
You can learn more about the Business Continuity Suite at www.businesscontinuitysuite.com, where you’ll find white papers, data sheets, an analyst’s report and more. Or sign up for the free, one-hour classes which will show you how you can offer simple, affordable cloud backup to your customers.
Intel and McAfee: A marriage made in cloud heaven?
The channel is buzzing on today’s news that Intel is acquiring McAfee, the security technology firm, for nearly $8 billion. The VAR Guy says this new union should cause a little fear and trembling in Redmond and Mountain View as it is signaling that Intel doesn’t trust Microsoft and Symantec to keep IT secure as everything moves to the cloud. So will this be a marriage made in cloud heaven? Will Intel, by acquiring McAfee, keep business data safe and secure, no matter where it’s housed?
It will be many months before we have answers to these questions, but it’s still fun to ask them. In the mean time, this could create great opportunities for channel partners with an eye on the future who are looking for serious security alternatives. If Intel can successfully merge the companies and the technologies, it will create an opening for solution providers who want to deliver solid security embedded in hardware, and low margins. It may be a leap forward for business continuity moving into the cloud era.
No one is saying Intel’s relationship with Microsoft is over. But they’ll certainly be depending on their own brand for security solutions in the future. Channel partners will want to be asking these same questions as they set disaster recovery planning and future business migration to the cloud.
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.
ShadowProtect Server Scenario Guide
ShadowProtect Server and ShadowProtect Small Business Server have a lot of uses beyond backup and disaster recovery. You may not even know all of the ways that ShadowProtect Server can help you protect your valuable business data. That’s why we’ve put together a scenario guide that shows several different ways you can use ShadowProtect Server for various problems.
For example, if you thought ShadowProtect Server was just a tool to help you perform server backup or bare metal recovery, you will be pleasantly surprised. Some of the other use cases include server migration, granular recovery of files and folders, disaster recovery testing and planning, backup verification and backup management.
The scenario guide is posted on our Web site as a PDF. Download it to find out all of the ways that the latest version in the award-winning ShadowProtect line of backup, disaster recovery and migration software can help you protect your data.
ShadowProtect Server Review in Redmondmag.com
Redmond Magazine just posted a review roundup of several backup and disaster recovery products for servers. The review spotlights four products designed especially for SMBs, including StorageCraft ShadowProtect Server™. The reviewer gave ShadowProtect high marks, and pointed out several great features.
Backups in SP are image-based, using the underlying VSS technology in Windows Server and providing very fast backups after the first full backup, as only changed sectors are backed up.
SP is a comprehensive product, offering efficient backups and smoothly blending the physical and virtual worlds for easy disaster recovery.
Check out the full review online and see why ShadowProtect is a great choice, especially if maximizing business continuity is really important for your company.
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.
Reliable Recovery
StorageCraft is featured in the March 12 edition of Processor in an article titled Reliable Recovery. StorageCraft VP of Product Management Brandon Nordquist discusses the company’s growth, even in a difficult economy, as well as the need for quick and reliable disaster recovery.
StorageCraft intends to continue its program of product expansion in the year ahead. One area that Nordquist has identified as having growth potential is virtualization, a key area for many software developers. Another major effort will be to increase the speed of recovery in all of its ShadowProtect applications.
“When you’re really in a crunch—when servers are down or the CEO’s laptop is not working—that’s when you need to do a very fast restore,” he says, noting that the key difficulty IT administrators have is keeping up with the daily accumulation of work data that then has to be restored in the event of a failure.
Nordquist also discusses StorageCraft’s business model, product line and some future plans in the article.
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.
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.
Final Discount Pricing Offer
StorageCraft is now offering competitive upgrade pricing for BakBone customers who decide to make the switch to ShadowProtect backup and disaster recovery software. The discount offer is for current users of BakBone NetVault Backup, Bare Metal Recovery and Real-Time Data Protector.
To get the competitive upgrade discount pricing — which is 35% off list price — customers have to show proof of license, like a copy of their license certificate, a copy of their receipt or an e-mail confirmation of a software download. Send an e-mail to discounts@storagecraft.com or send a fax to +1 801 545-4705 along with your proof of purchase. (You can mail in your product CD as a proof of purchase, too.) The offer is available in North America and South America only through March 15, 2010.
Competitive Upgrade Pricing
StorageCraft is offering competitive upgrade pricing for Computer Associates customers who decide to make the switch to ShadowProtect backup and disaster recovery software. The discount offer is for current users of CA ARCserve Backup or Disk Backup and Restore.
To get the competitive upgrade discount pricing — which is 35% off list price — customers have to show proof of license, like a copy of their license certificate, a copy of their receipt or an e-mail confirmation of a software download. Send an e-mail to discounts@storagecraft.com or send a fax to +1 801 545-4705 along with your proof of purchase. (You can mail in your product CD as a proof of purchase, too.) The offer is available in North America and South America only through March 15, 2010.