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Complete Backup & Disaster Recovery Solution

Can your business survive a major data loss? Even the smallest loss can lead to large costs in productivity and fatal consequences for a company’s survival. Protecting your data is not an option. Businesses cannot tolerate downtime. Backing up data is the most important safeguard against losing data.  This information can be important financial files, text documents, or saved email messages. An alarming number of businesses think their data is securely backed up. Before you risk your time and money settling on a tape backup that often fails or a remote Internet data backup as your business continuity plan, consult I.T. Solutions of South Florida. 

A recent study discovered that, of companies experiencing a “major loss” of computer records, 43 percent never reopened, 51 percent closed within two years of the loss, and a mere 6 percent survived over the long-term. For small and medium-sized businesses in particular, these statistics suggest the necessity of crafting a business continuity planning strategy grounded in a robust data backup and recovery solution. I.T. Solutions of South Florida helps you to develop the blueprint for how your business plans to survive everything from equipment failure to disasters like hurricanes. Smaller businesses generally lack the in-house I.T. resources to achieve these demanding planning, technical and process requirements. Therefore, many small to medium sized business either neglect to implement any data-oriented business continuity plan or else approach data backup and recovery in a sporadic, rudimentary fashion that fails to conform to the best practices.  Let I.T. Solutions of South Florida ensure that your business has the most robust business continuity plan.

Protect Valuable Informational Assets & Keep Downtime To A Minimum

We offer the quicker, smarter and more economical backup and disaster recovery solution designed just for our clients. With a standby server on site, recovery in the event of server downtime is as fast and simple as powering up a virtual machine. The key component of disaster recovery,off site storage, is provided effortlessly and affordably as part of this service.

Near Real-Time Backups: Our “Incremental Forever” methodology captures all changes to the initial image in increments of 15 minutes. The Incremental Forever technology not only backs up recent datasets but also allows our clients to reconstruct the state of their data as it stood at the end of various 15-minute restoration points. This level of forensic and auditable data recovery may satisfy various regulatory requirements (such as HIPAA and GLBA) for data retention and data record reconstruction, and also serves stakeholders such as supply chain planners, warehouse analysts, auditors, and legal counsel.

On-site Virtual Server: If any of your servers fail, our server virtualization technology embedded in the Network Attached Storage (NAS) allows customer servers and applications to be restored and rebooted within two hours. As you may sometimes endure a wait of several days in order to receive replacement servers from vendors, your NAS can have your business up and running. The NAS multitasks so that, even while functioning as a virtual server, it can continue to back up data from other devices plugged into the NAS. Our technology thus allows you to remain in business without any significant loss of data backup, server functionality, or application downtime.

A Complete Image: We generate an image of all hard drive partitions via an agent, which is warehoused on the NAS device physically located at your location. The data is stored AES-256 bit encrypted and compressed, reaching efficiencies as high as 2:1. We employ a block-level, not file-level, backup, which means that data is captured at the level of 1s and 0s. Block level data is raw data which does not have a file structure imposed on it. Database applications such as Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server transfer data in blocks. Block transfer is the most efficient way to write to disk and is much less prone to errors such as those that result from file-level backups. Additionally, block level backups are not affected by open files or open databases. The block-level image is an exact digital duplicate of the on-site server.

Intuitive and Flexible Restoration: A good backup system should allow for quick and flexible restores. Our solution allows for recovery of files, folders, partitions, mailboxes/messages, databases/tables using a quick and intuitive process. In case of a complete server failure we do support a bare metal restore to new hardware which has a different configuration, hardware and drivers as compared to the failed server. Our 15-minute incremental based backup allows restores to be done from any point in time, allowing for multiple versions of files, folders, messages/mailboxes, database/tables to be restored.

Secure Remote Storage: After imaging the servers to which it is attached, the NAS device then creates an independent 256-bit encrypted tunnel and transmits the imaged data to a secure offsite location where it resides in an encrypted, compressed format. That remote site then replicates again to an alternate data center, creating a total of three copies of the data in three geographically distinct regions. Since the data is encrypted and only you have the key, no one has access at any of the remote storage facilities.

Transmitting data to a remote site is a key component. It guarantees that, in case of physical damage to the client’s network or NAS, or even regional disaster, the data is safe in uncompromised locations. Encryption is an important step in the process of transmitting data between the NAS and the remote sites, because it greatly reduces the risk of data loss incidents that plague magnetic tape and prevents man-in-the-middle attacks during transmission. We employ the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm because it has never been broken and is currently considered the gold standard of encryption techniques and render transmitted data immune to theft.

Secure, Bandwidth Throttling Transfer: Transmission itself occurs over your Internet connection, and can easily be configured to minimize bandwidth consumption. Our NAS leverages Adaptive Bandwidth Throttling, which only utilizes unused bandwidth or allows us to set an outbound limit. Our UDP based smart transfer technology utilizes a host of innovative algorithms to speed up data transport and resume from failure. We can therefore exercise fine control over the data imaging and transmission processes.

24x7 Completely Managed Solution:  Our Network Operations Center (NOC) monitors your NAS units and the attached servers 24/7. Failed processes generate immediate alerts to our engineers, who often remotely correct errors within minutes of receiving notification. In case of more serious NAS issues, we will conduct repairs at your site. If any NAS units are irreparably damaged or destroyed, we will overnight ship replacements—pre-loaded with all stored data—directly to your location. 

Affordable Cost: Starting as low as $179.99! We offer a pricing packaged that is all inclusive of the complete backup and disaster recovery service-with no hidden costs. All your costs are bundled and include the NAS, the Incremental Forever Methodology, file restorations, file integrity checks, secure data transmission and remote storage.

NAS vs. Tape

Though tape backup is common, it’s far from being an ideal BDR solution. Analysts have said that over half of tape backups fail, so chances are that if you need to restore from tape, you’ll be out of luck. But assuming all goes well with tape backup, how does it compare with the NAS appliance?

What Happens If My Server Crashes?

Now let’s look at how our solution keeps your business running if, for instance, an e-mail server goes down.

Because the device takes snap shots every 15 minutes, administrators can choose a point in time shortly before the problem occurred and with just a few clicks of the mouse, this appliance allows you to activate it as a virtual server to keep business processes up and running while we diagnose the problem and plan a course of action for the down email server.

In the event of a catastrophic server failure, our business continuity solution allows us to perform a bare metal restore on new hardware in a fraction of the time of a typical server rebuild. And, this NAS device restoration will allow you to eliminate the hardware abstraction layer during the restore process so that the new drivers can be loaded on the server replacement, no matter which server brand is used — giving you speedy recovery options in times of crisis.

Recovery after a Catastrophe

If a disaster results in your end-client losing their entire office — servers and on-site NAS included— you order a newly imaged NAS with the most current backup-normally the last daily that was done, to be shipped out via next business-day air transportation to a location of your choice. If such an event occurs, we will not host the data at the co-location facility. Depending on the NAS model used, multiple servers can be virtualized on one NAS even as the NAS continues to perform backups of other servers.

When the NAS arrives, all you need to do is plug in a patch cable and you’re up and running. This recovery service will allow you to use the NAS for two weeks before it must be returned or purchased. This timeframe should allow you to get a new server ordered, in place and do a bare-metal restore from the NAS before returning the NAS. Alternatively, you can choose to keep the NAS and you will be billed for the list price of the new NAS. This would also allow you to use this NAS for the ongoing backups when you move forward, re-establishing your network 

Off-Site Storage Facility

For additional protection in the event of a complete disaster, data is securely transferred to an off-site co-location facility on a daily basis. Then, in event of such an occurrence, you will receive a new NAS device imaged with your latest data. The storage facilities are two XO high-availability data centers in Phoenix and Baltimore. They provide: