Believe it of not the 31st of March is World Backup Day. It's official, apparently.
This is a good thing in a way because in the decades I have worked with computers I have seen so many people lose their data. When there is a catastrophic storage failure, loss or theft of a device the first question asked is "okay, do you have a backup ?" and many times the answer is no so as I.T Professionals, people like myself should be making "World Backup Day" happen 365 times a year.
Disclaimer: The purpose of this blog is to emphasise the importance of data backup. It is not a guide and it is not a set of instructions. iLogix Computer Solutions do not sell backups or profit from backup tools and utilities such as backup as a service. We hope that after reading our blog you can go and do your own research and find a solution that you feel is right for you.
Everything on a computer or smartphone can be replaced. We know this because iLogix Computer Solutions repair broken computers and phones day in and day out. There is of course an exception to this, there is one thing that can not be replaced....your data.
Your Documents, Spreadsheets, Photos, Videos, all those memories which which can become substantial over time can be lost in a heartbeat. This can happen is more ways that you can imagine. I once had a customer who, after Christmas drinks, fell asleep on a tube train in central London with his laptop case straps over his shoulders. When he woke the strap was still there but the case had been unhooked and detached from the straps and taken away with his laptop inside. All he had left was the shoulder strap.
Now heres the thing. Backups are so easy to do and there are so many ways to backup. iLogix Computer Solutions advises customers to backup their data all of the time. We do not sell backups, we believe that backups are so crucial and the impact of not having a backup so potentially catastrophic we will not profit from such things. We will guide our clients and users, we will demonstrate the ease and show our clients how easy backups can be and that they do not have to come with any kind of serious burden financially. In fact it does not take too much imagination to think that it is better to spend a few pounds a month on a good backup solution than not to.
We blogged about Apples Time Machine Backup < -- here --
Time Machine is the backup tool that comes built into macOS. Time Machine is versatile, it allows for restore of individual files and folders (brick level) and allows for a complete system recovery (bare metal). Time Machine can backup your data to direct attached external storage such as a USB drive as well as network attached storage like a Time Capsule, NAS or a Server share. Time Machine supports backup to multiple targets so for instance at home it may backup to an encrypted USB disk and when you go to the office Time Machine can backup to a network share.
I use Time Machine myself as I am a Mac user, however there are so many other ways to backup.
At iLogix Computer Solutions we have seen a lot of great backup solutions. We will detail some of the most popular ones we see in this blog.
Backblaze: Backblaze offer unlimited backup storage for just a few bucks a month. Your backup data is encrypted and they have no issues sharing basic info on their processes and infrastructure. See the photos below, looks impressive. I have actually used Backblaze myself and I have performed a DR (disaster recovery) with Backblaze and it did everything it said on the tin. Backblaze invest a lot of money into their infrastructure, it expands and grows both in terms of availability and features.
There is one thing to note, although the Internet knows no boundaries the data may not be stored in the UK. Does that effect you? Check with your lawyers. The data is encrypted, you lock it up digitally in a shared nothing environment so is that going to be a problem? If you lose the keys not even Backblaze can help.
A Backblaze Storage rack.
A Backblaze datacentre
Carbonite Backup: I have used Carbonite in a corporate setting. Carbonite offer a number of plans, as they all do, including protection for Small Business. In a corporate setting IT managers can create policies such as for instance locking out the user interface. This means you backup the computer but the user can not get to the backed up data. Once it is taken off the computer it is safely stored and controlled by IT. Your laptops are simply backed up and the organisation controls the backed up data. That may sound strange, but many IT Managers will do this to satisfy security policies.
Synology: Synology is a hardware vendor of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. The great thing about many NAS devices, Synology included, is that they now come with some superb apps. Synology offer an App with their NAS devices called Active Backup. Active Backup connects to PCs and Servers, Physical as well as VMware and Hyper-V Virtual Machines. Active Backup runs on schedules and sends out alerts and notifications. This is ideal for a smaller business, and if a business has a Synology that they use as a file server the Synology can backup the data to third party cloud storage like Microsoft Azure Blob Storage or Amazon S3 using Hyper Backup.
Cloud Computing: Every day many of us interact with infrastructures where delivery is built on the foundation of Servers but having one in the corner of your office humming away and full of dust is not always the best solution and is fast becoming a relic of a bygone era.
Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workspace introduces the concept of Infrastructure as a Service meaning that what Servers traditionally did for Business can now be delivered through Cloud computing. Google Workspace and Microsoft Azure have multiple clusters of servers globally. When you subscribe to these services you are buying into a multi million pound infrastructure that spans server halls, data centres, cities and continents. The SLA (service level agreement) is therefore impressive with huge amounts of up time. This sounds truly wonderful of course however, is your data backed up?
Just because your data is in Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive it does not mean that it is backed up. Sure there are retention policies for files and emails but it is only a backup if the same data exists in more than one place. Google offers a service known as Google Vault which is either an add-on licence or included with your subscription, depending on the licence level you have. For Microsoft 365 there are services available that will backup your data, for example one such service iLogix Computer Solutions really like is Barracuda Cloud Services available for Azure.
As you can see backing up is easy, backing up goes beyond a best practice. Anything electrical will inevitably cease to function as some point in the future. Anything with a keyboard is not to be trusted. Backup your data!! hopefully you will never have to thank yourself.
iLogix Computer Solutions repair computers and electrical devices. iLogix are Microsoft and Apple certified. iLogix can rebuild operating systems and restore data from backup.
If you have a device issue please contact us on 01252 962898