DIGITAL7  Newsletter » Business Continuity

Business Continuity: Protecting your valuable data

If you're like most businesses in the Wakatipu basin, your data is the lifeblood of your business. You manage your financial records, use your email for bookings, sales and promotions, keep track of all your business documents and more, all on your computers. At best a computer crash can ruin your day – at worst it could put you out of business! Certainly it may cost you sales, time and hassle. However, just a few basic procedures can go a long way to ensuring that, if your system goes down, you'll be able to recover quickly and easily.

There are three things that you should do – at the very least – to ensure business continuity. First back up your files on a regular basis. If your hard disk crashes and your databases are fatally corrupted, you'll be able to recover almost everything from the back-up. Secondly you should have some sort of redundancy built into your systems, especially if you rely on your computers to conduct business. And lastly you should be using an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) to protect your critical computers in case of a power blackout or surge.

Back-Up and Restore

Regular system back-ups are essential to protect your data from catastrophic loss. They can be as basic as manually copying your important files to a portable USB thumbdrive or a CD or as formal as a dedicated system back-up and recover software application that does all of these things automatically.

Home users can cheaply and easily use software such as “Norton Save & Restore” to keep backups of your critical data on DVD or external Hard Disk. For Client/Server systems typically employed by businesses there are a variety of specialised software packages that can seamlessly manage the backup of critical business data as well as recover from the complete destruction of a server. Formerly, businesses tended to use expensive tape-based backup systems but as the cost of hard disk drives has reduced and their capacities increased it is now much more economical to utilise external hard-disks for this. Digital7 has designed reliable backup solutions for many leading businesses in the region and is able to recommend solutions for multiple computers and client/server systems which are tailored to the specific needs of the business..

One final word of advice on this subject – Make sure that your system backup is physically stored off-site. Every year several NZ businesses lose all of their business data in a premises fire because the backup was not kept offsite.

Built-in Redundancy

Redundancy means that you have a ‘spare' that can immediately take over operations if part of your primary server or network fails. Redundancy often takes the form of duplicated hardware components where a “hot standby' spare will automatically take over in the event of failure – Servers typically can have redundant power supplies, redundant fans and hot-swappable hard disks. Indeed those of our customers who have critical operations often have a secondary server purely for standby. For Windows server systems redundancy can also be introduced by using a technology called RAID (redundant Array of inexpensive disks) which will automatically recover your data in the event of the failure of a disk drive. Building redundancy into your system carries a very real cost in terms of dollars, but if your business cannot afford downtime it is money well-spent.

You have to balance the additional cost of making your system ‘bullet-proof' versus the losses you'll accrue from lost revenue and disappointed customers. There are varying levels of redundancy and Digital7 can help you decide the most cost-effective strategies for your business. If you cannot afford system down-time, investing in the appropriate level of redundancy makes economic sense.

Uninterruptible Power Supplies

The heart of your business network – your server and PCs – are fairly sensitive to the electricity that flows into your premises. Power here in Central Otago is problematic at best. We get surges, sags and, on occasion, complete blackouts, especially during and after winter storms. Not only do these power anomalies reduce the lifespan of your machines significantly but sudden system shutdowns can cause hard disk failures and the subsequent loss of data. You can recover the data – if you have backed up your files – but it is a lot of trouble. And any unsaved documents will be lost forever.

There is an easy solution. It's called an Uninterruptible Power System or UPS. A UPS is essentially a back-up battery that gives you enough time to save all your documents and gracefully shut down your server and PCs when the lights go out. They also protect against Power Surges. There are all sorts of shapes and sizes of UPS units and it's one of the best investments you can make. If you don't have a UPS protecting your computers, you're taking an easily avoidable risk. They are relatively inexpensive to buy, don't take up much room and can save you many hours and dollars if the power fails.