Business data is generally regarded as a company’s most valuable asset. Data loss such as email, company information, client documentation, databases etc can cause major disruption and have an impact on business continuity and its ability to trade.
We cannot stress enough the importance of backing up data and having a copy of all company data held off site. According to Gartner, 50% of companies go out of business within 6 months if they lose access to mission critical data or applications and are unable to recover within 24 hours.
Generally the main method used for data backup is on tapes taken off site on a daily basis. One of the main questions asked by clients is whether there is an alternative to taking tapes off site.
The answer is on line backup or to have data replication to a server either at another office or to a co location site.
In the past online backup has generally been an expensive option because of the broadband connection speed required, software costs and data storage. However, broadband speeds are now significantly faster, the backup software is more sophisticated and the cost of hard drive space has decreased.
In April 2009 we took ownership of a full server rack at a co location site in Milton Keynes. This site was chosen because we considered it to be a lower risk location than IP or Tele House in Docklands area of London. The co location site is only 45 minutes from our Stevenage office.
The co location site has two x 4000amps (3 phase) on site sub stations and an automatic standby generator located within the internal plant room with full automatic auto change over panel and sufficient fuel for at least 32 hours service (24/7-4hr fuel supplier is on contract).
A second co location site in Northampton has a similar set up and we have the option of locating additional equipment there if required.
We use a software solution that encrypts and manages data off site. Only the client has the encryption key and therefore only the client is able to read the information.
The software is sophisticated, it backups additions, deletion or changes to the data to the equivalent of byte level rather than file level so it avoids having to unnecessarily send large amounts of data making the process of transferring data quicker and requiring less bandwidth.
The initial backup is called the “seed load”. For small amounts of data up to 25GB, and dependent on the Broadband upload connection speed, and for clients the seed load can be done on a Managed Service day.
For larger amounts of data we would need to copy the data onsite on to an external Hard Drive and physically take this to the co-location site in Milton Keynes. This service is charged at £235.
The online backup is charged at 90p per GB of data per month plus a £25 per quarter management charge. The costs are higher than what is available in the Public Cloud but this is effectively a Private Cloud managed by us. See Cloud computing.
For large amounts of data it would be more cost efficient to have a dedicated backup server hosted in our rack at the co location site.
Server hosting for client rack-mount servers are charged at £75 per month per U (45mm) server height.