Backup disaster. Need GOOD advice on a backup strategy for an office.

[Majestic]

Hi,

Well I had a bit of a disaster with a company I was working with. I had setup Genie Backup Professional for them to backup the 4 computers they had on their network to a 250 gig external hard drive which they already had before they engaged my services. They have 2 computers running Windows XP and another two running Windows Vista. In any case and to make a long story short, the owner / CEO of the company had a Dell computer running Windows Vista that was in a raid stripe set (raid 0) where one of the two drives failed.

Well this should not have been a problem since I was backing everything up every week with 1 full backup every friday and differential backups every day. That said, when I went to get his data, NOTHING in his profile had been backed up except for garbage, non-important files. His profile even though I selected ALL of the USERS folder had not backed up his profile at all. So essentially none of his email nor his documents or desktop had been backed up all this time. Consequentially he's now hiring a professional data recovery service to recover the stripe set off the defective hard drive. Why Dell had him have a raid stripe set for speed instead of a mirror is beyond me. But that's besides the point.

There were issues along the way such as I could not backup files that were in use so we made a policy that users should close their applications such as Outlook at the end of each day.

So now even though I have recommended to him that they have one server, perhaps put exchange on it and segregate everything in one area. He does not want a server at all nor a domain for that matter. He simply wants a local backup. I still have to backup the entire network. In any case, now I'm looking for a proper solution that's simple and backs up everything without issue.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Majestic

 

[TimeCode]

This guy (the customer) is an idiot! After all that he isn't interested in a server?

I ask you this question not to offend but for a point of reference...
How did you pitch the server to him? As an email/web server or an "All In One" backup device? Does he realize that he could have the Desktop and My Documents folders redirected to the server. This means there would be 1 place to take care of all backups and 1 central location to restore them as regular tests.

Might he fall under Hipaa requirements? That could push him in the server direction.

 

[Bullfighter]

When I setup backups for a company I let them know that backups are the most volatile IT service and because it involves a program accessing information potentially in use it may not be backed up.

I then quickly follow up with a a maintenance plan offering which includes backup verification and testing.

I worked for a large IT company handling backups for 10,000 users. Sometimes, they just don't work... even though the bu software says they do. (I use this story as part of my pitch )

So, if I were you, I would push firmly (but politely) for the server and offer your maintenance services to prevent this type of issue with a server. Go ahead and list off the benefits of having a server, like TimeCode mentioned. As well as offering to setup a redundant RAID setup (1 or 5) and explain the benefits.

Good Luck!
EP

 

[Nextora]

I use Mozy or MozyPro for my clients online backup and Acronis as a local backup & image. I highly recommend using 2 different backup methods. Mozy, MozyPro & Acronis all backup files that are in use.

Also just as Bullfighter recommended you should also sell them a maintenance plan that includes backup verification and testing. No backup method is 100% reliable and you should always let you clients know this.

 

[tauzin23]

Synology NAS unit?

You could try to pitch him a NAS unit. I have these setup for clients (small business) that have 10 or less pc's. I use the synology brand and get them from Newegg.com. They come in (1) hard drive config or (2) with raid, or all the way up to the (4) drive configs. These I find are a good solution for backups and file sharing on a network for clients that don't need or want a server.

The synology units can also be setup for remote access of files over the internet so users can access their files from home. You can setup users and folders with certain permissions. You can also remote manage these units from your office... to check backups, add users, etc.
Synology's new firmware has been greatly updated and very user friendly. Also there is one new feature that I like, if there is a power outage the unit can be set to power back up automatically! nice feature.

Hope this helps.

 

[JRDtechnet]

Ouch! I know straight data recovery costs a nice shiny penny...can't imagine the cost of having to recover data off a hard drive and then rebuild the raid-0 config with the other hard drive. yikes!

Are you still in touch with the company and has he mentioned anything about you paying for the recovery or putting it through your insurance?

 

[Majestic]

This guy (the customer) is an idiot! After all that he isn't interested in a server?

I ask you this question not to offend but for a point of reference...
How did you pitch the server to him? As an email/web server or an "All In One" backup device? Does he realize that he could have the Desktop and My Documents folders redirected to the server. This means there would be 1 place to take care of all backups and 1 central location to restore them as regular tests.

Might he fall under Hipaa requirements? That could push him in the server direction.

I pitched the server as a solid solution which would allow him redudancy (of course I broke that down into english) and would prevent such a problem from happening again. But he insisted he only wanted local backups.. since then he brought in a "friend" to look at what I did and to tell him my backups were worthless. How useless is that since in the first place what I selected in Genie backup simply did not do what it was supposed to do. oh well..

Majestic

 

[Majestic]

Ouch! I know straight data recovery costs a nice shiny penny...can't imagine the cost of having to recover data off a hard drive and then rebuild the raid-0 config with the other hard drive. yikes!

Are you still in touch with the company and has he mentioned anything about you paying for the recovery or putting it through your insurance?

I'm still working with the company but I have not billed them for any of my time as I feel responsible for not being as thorough as I could verifying the backups (even though I DID verify I did not check everything if you know what I mean..). In any case, I suggested upgrading the network cards to gigabits (and the switch) to reduce the backup time but they said to start the backups earlier instead.. ugh.. Besides that a colleague of mine suggested I use a program called SyncToy (powertoy from Microsoft) and I'm looking into that.

It appears like they absolutely don't want new hardware. Meanwhile it's costing $2k to recover the data. Fortunately they're not sueing me for this. Considering I don't have liability insurance this is something I should look into for the future!

I'm working on this today as we speak.... what a mess!

Majestic

 

[frostbyte5014]

If you have an extra computer at your office with lots of room to spare you could try logmein backup. This is what I use to offer my customers offsite backups. It meet all HIPPA regs too. In any case be sure to use something that can back up open files.

 

[tartis]

A server with tape backups would have saved him time and money.

 

[NWPhotog]

It appears like they absolutely don't want new hardware. Meanwhile it's costing $2k to recover the data. Fortunately they're not sueing me for this. Considering I don't have liability insurance this is something I should look into for the future!

I think that would fall under Errors and Omissions coverage which means regular liability coverage would not pay it. At the cost of E&O you are better to self-insure any way.

 

[layoric]

May I ask

If you have an extra computer at your office with lots of room to spare you could try logmein backup. This is what I use to offer my customers offsite backups. It meet all HIPPA regs too. In any case be sure to use something that can back up open files.

How your pricing structure is for your logmein service?

I'm currently pitching backup services and going between JungleDisk and logmein/having my own server with vembu or crashplan.

Layoric

 

[PatrickB]

Part of implementing a backup plan is testing the recovery. If the recovery cannot be done, the plan is of no use.

I learned this when a customer called asking if I had a copy of his data. (I did not, and had no reason to.) He said that the backup plan he had put into place had been backing up all of the files on the local workstation every day -- but nothing from the server.

Another customer was a dentist with a new office and a new LAN. His staff was swapping the tape out every morning. During a burglary, the computers were all stolen. Unfortunately, no one had ever scheduled the backup software to perform a backup overnite. Also, no one had ever tested the recovery. They did have the *blank* tapes offsite though.

Fortunately for me, I had not been involved in implementing the original backup solutions.


The bottom line is to test the restore plan.

-- Patrick B.