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Welcome to our very first Spiderhost newsletter! You’ll like our newsletters because we’re not trying to sell you stuff or stuff you with sales. Our goal is simply to educate you on IT – the kind of info. you can actually use. Each quarter we’ll focus on an issue, technology, or news item that’s relevant to growing businesses. They’re definitely worth looking forward to! So put it on your calendar – and please add us to your address book or safe senders list. Thanks! Before we get started, I want to thank you for being a part of the Spiderhost family. We’ve come such a long way – from starting as a one-employee, apartment-based operation to the multi-department outfit housed in our beautiful downtown Lake Mary office we are today! We now have our own state-of-the-art data center, which is being expanded as we filled it up in less than a year, and are creating a tech support team called Eight Legged Geeks – stay tuned for more! During our growth we had some first-hand experiences with backups and data recovery. Some not-so-good experiences. So I want to devote our first newsletter to backups – specifically, why you need them, how they help you, and a couple of examples about what happens when you slack off in the backup department. Let’s get started! |
| All About Backups |
What’s the big deal with backups? The big deal with backups is that you do them or your data perishes. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it will happen. So whether you do backups in-house or outsource them, you must do backups. No exceptions. If you’re worried about cost, don’t be. There are inexpensive ways to do it – some small businesses have a portable hard drive and back up their PCs before they leave for the day. This may take a little time, but it’s cheap. Or you can set up an automatic backup system that does the grunt work for you. These include… • off-site
backups There’s more information on each of these below. These cost a bit more but are easy and dependable. But no matter what you do, do something – and test the integrity of the backup. How? Easy! Just run a backup, then open it up to see if all the data is there. What are off-site backups? Not surprisingly, off-site backups are a lot like they sound: your data gets backed up and stored somewhere else (like in our data center). Spiderhost’s off-site backups work like this: We connect to the server(s) at your office, wherever it is, and backup your files to our data center. We do this at the same, non-peak time each day without any effort of your part. Off-site backups can be used by anyone and can handle hundreds of gigs of data. Off-site backups are usually better than DIY backups. Why? Well, once daily backups leave you vulnerable to data losses. They’re also not good at quickly recovering data. And if you don’t have an in-house IT staff, your backup may suffer from inconsistent procedures and failed data recovery. Not to mention the time-consuming nature of doing it yourself! When you partner with someone to do your backups off-site you get a lot of benefits: • Continuous,
fully-automated backups – you don’t have to do anything
once it’s set up. Awesome! What is continuous data protection? Continuous data protection (CDP) is using software to copy every version of a file to servers in a data center, just like off-site backups. This way you get a copy of every change made to files, and all of it is stored on offsite servers. Essentially, CDP captures every version ever saved so you can go back to any point in time and restore from there. CDP is great because it lets you to recover business applications in minutes and eliminates slow backups, labor-intensive recovery, lost data, and downtime. And all these things save time and money! What is version control? Say you were working on a document yesterday and saved it. This morning an associate came in, opened your document, made some changes, and saved it – same file name, same file. When you open it again this afternoon all of your changes from yesterday are gone. Or are they? Technically they’re still there – it’s just that you don’t know how to access them! With version control you can track all changes and open various versions, going back to a previous version at any point. Very convenient. Which backup is best for me? Let us help you decide! Spiderhost has been doing all of these for years and can help you narrow down your options. Then we’ll set up the one that best meets your needs, and you can cross “GET A BACKUP” off of your to-do list. Just fill out this simple form and we’ll get in touch with you for a no-pressure, no-cost consultation. Or call us at Toll Free 1-866-SPIDERHOST. |
| Backups in the News |
Backups may not seem newsworthy, but when one goes bad they’re suddenly front-page news. Want to read a gut-wrenching story about how a good backup strategy could have prevented a disaster? Then read this! It’s the sad story of a technician who wiped out a disk drive containing a $38 billion account – and the backup tapes were unreadable. Sounds like somebody was not testing the integrity of their backups! |
| Backup Case Study |
In keeping with our backup theme, this issue’s featured case study is the university of Florida’s Athletic Department website, GatorZone.com. They trust Spiderhost with their data, and so can you. Click here to read the case study. |
| Backup Horror Story |
This issue’s IT horror story is The Case of the Spendthrift Server. It’s an object lesson in the value – usually in time and heart attacks saved – of not being cheap about backups. We realize that money is tight. But save the saving for copy paper and toilet paper, not the servers your data lives on. Click here to read the story. |
An Innovative IT and Internet Services Provider, Spiderhost delivers customized, best in class technology solutions to small and mid-size businesses that fit their unique needs and individual budgets. With a robust suite of Internet products and services, Spiderhost combines technical elegance, high performance, security, and economical operation for maximum positive impact. Spiderhost enables companies to affordably overcome challenges, freeing up time, money, and energy to focus on their core business. For more information, please visit: www.spiderhost.com. 142 W Lakeview Ave., Ste 2090 | Lake Mary, FL 32746 |