Backup and Recovery For All Businesses

Let’s face it, businesses are vulnerable. Not just to the vagaries of the economy or whims of the environment. Your greatest vulnerability may be sitting on your desk or mounted in the racks of your data center. Without backup and recovery, you are one violation of Murphy’s Law away from major headaches.

What is most at risk? Your data. At one time, all business records were on paper and the big risk was fire. Today, most business records are electronic and the big risk is corruption or erasure. One thing that can go wrong is that somebody accidentally changes or deletes something important and there is no copy. Another is that an entire day’s, week’s or longer data set is wiped out by a disk crash. Once again, no copies means you have to start all over to recreate what was lost.

Don’t depend on backup CD ROMs or DVDs written whenever somebody remembers to create them or has some free time. You expect the rest of your business processes to be more robust. Give serious consideration to doing the same for your valuable electronic data files.

Acronis specializes in backup and recovery for all size businesses from home offices right on up to major corporations. They offer backup and recovery across the network and for standalone Windows servers, Linux servers, workstations, and online backup. Other solutions include server disk management, server system deployment, recovery for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Exchange SBS, recovery for MS SQL Server and workstation system deployment.

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 is based on a unified platform consisting of a suite of modules that work together to support disaster recovery, data protection and migration. Together they perform single-pass backup and de-duplication for all your files, folders, applications and operating systems. This includes coverage of disks, files, virtual machines, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server. Backups can be targeted to tape, disk storage or the cloud.

The latest migration, of course, is to the cloud. Acronis Backup and Recovery Online gives you secure and cost effective offsite data protection. Why offsite? While local storage protects you against disk failure or accidental file deletion, it won’t help if a flood or tornado comes roaring through town. Your precious backup tapes and disks can easily be smashed all over the countryside along with your other computing assets. That’s why you should consider offsite storage.

In fact, the most efficient and robust solution can easily be a combination of onsite and offsite backup. Why? While offsite backup gives you protection against complete loss of your local facilities, you are dependent on a bandwidth link to get to your data. Most companies have far more LAN bandwidth than they do WAN bandwidth or Internet connection bandwidth. In-house bandwidth is relatively cheap and 100 Mbps to 1000 Mbps can be had for commodity prices. Once you leave the building and depend on a third party provider to connect you across town or across the country, the cost of bandwidth gets pricey fast.

What this means in practical terms is that you can get your files back a lot faster over your own network than you can bringing them back on the cloud. For a single small file, this is no big deal. But if you lose a Terabyte disk, it can be awhile before you have it restored through your telecom link.

Acronis addresses this security vs accessibility conundrum by offering an integrated solution that combines their Backup & Recovery 11 software with their online cloud product. Most backup solutions do one or the other, not both. This integration means that your administration efforts are made easy, while you enjoy the benefits of convenience and protection.

Are you a bit squeamish about what could happen to your business if technical or other disaster strikes unexpectedly? Sleep better knowing your data is protected. Check out Acronis Backup and Recovery Solutions now.

Online Backup For Disaster Recovery

In computing, disaster is always just around the corner. There are so many potential points of failure. Disks can crash at any time. Data can be accidentally erased. Both equipment and data can be stolen or destroyed by fire, storm or flood. So, why are we so convinced that it just isn’t going to happen?


The problem with computer disasters is that you may never get a warning. One minute everything is humming along nicely. The next minute, it’s all gone. That scares most of us just enough that we occasionally copy important files to other computers, alternative hard drives, thumb drives, CD ROMs or DVD ROMs. It’s a lot better than nothing, but the hit and miss nature of these backups means that there are long periods when data is changing but only in one place.

The other weakness of our ad-hoc personal backup systems is that they only protect from certain types of losses. A CD ROM backup protects against a hard disk failure. It doesn’t protect from natural disasters that wipe out the entire office, not merely a few computers or one hard drive. Just what would a tornado, hurricane, flood, fire or earthquake do to your facility? Think your backup disks would still be in good condition? Maybe. Maybe not. Can you really take that chance?

The traditional solution for robust backups is to send copies of your files to a remote location, such as a separate data center across town. Smaller companies store CD ROM backups in bank vaults away from the company facilities. Today’s solution is online backup. Everybody has a broadband connection and there are companies that specialize in being that secure data center that you can’t afford.

One of the best online backup companies is SOS Online Backup. They’ve been around since 2001 and have won numerous industry awards.

A really important feature that SOS offers is called Engage Live Protect. It detects whenever a file has been changed and immediately backs up that file. This certainly takes the weak link of remembering what to backup out of the loop. With file backups happening as needed, there is also no long time lag to the next scheduled backup during which something can go wrong.

Another nice feature of this service is that you can access your files on the Web from any computer with a web browser. You don’t have to use the computer that the file came from, which helps if that machine smokes. You can even share files by using an email address. SOS lets you backup to five computers with one simple account. There are enterprise level services available for larger organizations with many employees.

Have you integrated iPhones or iPads into your organization? SOS iPhone App lets you access all of your files anytime, anywhere from your iOS mobile device.

The big hesitation many people have with online backup systems is security. How can you be sure the bad guys won’t steal your data right out from under you? SOS protects you with a three-tiered encryption system that offers military grade security. The data to be backed up is first encrypted right on your computer using 256 bit AES encryption. While in-transit, 128 bit SSL is employed to secure the link. Finally, the data is stored using 1024 bit AES encryption.

Are you feeling a bit squeamish about all those files on your computer that could go “poof” at any time? How much would that hurt? Don’t let it happen. Get SOS Online Backup now and rest easy that your important files are stored away securely in the cloud, ready to retrieve at any time.