t2.ie Blog

Server/desktop/laptop/ or any data storage device imaging.

Ask yourself, do I backup? And how often.

You can never do enough backups. If youspend a day  doing an excel spreadsheet and it gets over written, well that’s a day’s wages gone out the window and another day doing it up.

Ask your self do you backup your server enough, is it backed up successfully? I do get the reports saying its successful, but is the data actually on those tapes? Has anyone even tested it?

Imaging has been out for many years, but now it’s constructed in such a way that it’s so easy to use and reliable and its affordable for everyone. It’s even so easy to test a complete restore and it doesn’t even have to interfere with your current setup or cause any issues with your network in real time.

This new system is the greatest solution to backups that I have seen in many years. Remember those nasty tapes that used to cause so much hassle being so temperamental, they are the same as video tapes the more you recorded on them the more they gave hassle.

The benefits are:

· You can image a whole Server/desktop/laptop/ or any data storage device on a:

1. Single external hard drive.

2. NAS device (network attached storage).

3. Internal hard drive.

4. Offsite.

5. Across the network to another server or pc.

· You can backup data by:

1. Full backups every day.

2. Incremental backups.

3. Differential backups.

4. File level backups.

5. Image the whole device.

· You can recover data by:

1. Browsing the image file like a file its self and browse through the directory structure and simply copy your file out of the image.

2. If you have a system failure and are unable to boot your operating system you can simply restore the last backup that took place and it will restore your server/desktop/laptop to its original state.

3. In the event of let’s say your server not booting because of a hardware issue it is possible to restore the image onto either a virtual server/vm ware server, another server or high spec pc as a temporary measure. This will then reduce the cost in downtime for users and the time for engineers to set everything up again from scratch. Although restoring your image onto a virtual server or another device may mean you need to purchase an add-on but for a few euro it’s worth it.

Take a look at this link from YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayz8zLbEsVk&eurl quite a funny one, but as simple as it is and you may say it will never happen to you, what happens if it does or the laptop get stolen, damaged in some way. Think of the benefits of backing up…

Many Thanks

John OReilly

Service Manager

t2