My partners computer crashed yesterday – it’s irreparable! So I re-moved her hard-drive to my server and, thankfully, she now has full access to all her files. But what if her crash had damaged her hard-drive; wiped all her data? Classic: we have no back-up of her PC files!
Losing your business data (i.e. data loss, rather than merely data unavailability when, say, your network is “down”) could be significantly more catastrophic than my experience with my partners PC. Studies have consistently shown that hardware failure and human error to be the most common causes of data loss:
- Intentional Action - intentional deletion of a file or program
- Unintentional Action – accidental deletion of a file or program, misplacement of CD/DVDs, administration errors, …
- Failure – power failure, hardware failure, business failure (e.g. bankruptcy of your software vendor), data corruption (database failure), …
- Disaster – water damage, fire, …
- Crime – theft, hacking, sabotage, malicious software …
The risks of data loss to your business could be great (statistics from here):
- 6% of all PCs will suffer an episode of data loss in any given year
- 31% of PC users have lost all of their files due to events beyond their control
- 34% of companies fail to test their tape backups, and of those that do, 77% have found tape back-up failures
- and, finally, the most disturbing statistic: 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster
So regular back-ups of your business data, preferably stored off-site, whilst not sexy is very sound advice – that even your average IT Consultancy should follow diligently!
All you need is a reliable, value for money, solution. So what’s available.
For a number of years now I have been using Amazon for my off-site back-ups of my business data. Amazon? Aren’t they just books?
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
Amazon S3 (part of Amazon’s Web Services – aws) “can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It [provides] access to the same highly scalable, reliable, secure, fast, inexpensive infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites (my italics).” Amazon states that “it’s designed for mission-critical and primary data storage.” And, I can confirm that it’s very cost effective! There’s No restrictions on what or how much you back-up. You only pay for what you use, and there’s no minimum charge.
Amazon S3’s “standard storage” is:
- Backed with the Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement
- Designed to provide 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability
- Designed to sustain the concurrent loss of data in two facilities
- Amazon S3 provides further protection via Versioning” (OK – really that’s a little too geeky! Essentially, it means older versions of your backed-up data can be retrieved)
Unfortunately, Amazon S3 interface is not the most accessible for the average user. You’ll need to create an account with Amazon, but then I suggest you use other, third party, applications to manage your back-ups.
There are free Browser add-on’s that provide some management of your data stored on Amazon S3 (see for example S3Fox for Firefox), but the best tool I have found, and used for a number of years now, is one provided by Jungle Disk (acquired by Rackspace in 2008).
Jungle Disk is designed to make use of cloud storage. It comes in a number of different editions. So, for example, the Workgroup Edition provides secure backup, synchronisation (more about this later …), and access to your data between up to 100 PCs. Their Backup Vault feature uses de-duplication technology – so you don’t back up the same data twice.
With the combination of Amazon S3 and Jungle Disk you’ll have a very reliable, off-site, value for money Disaster Recovery solution.
Costs?
- Jungle Disk (e.g. “workgroup edition”) – $4.00 / month / user
- Amazon S3 (e.g. “US Standard”):
- First 50 TB / month of storage used – $0.150 per GB
- All Data Transfer In – $0.100 per GB
- Requests – $0.01 per 1,000 requests
Need help and support with this? Do give me a call …
Notes
- “50 TB” that’s 50 terabytes - where 1 terabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, or 1,000 gigabytes (GB)
- There is a less expensive approach via Jungle Disk using Rackspace’s Cloud Storage as an alternative to Amazon S3
