Backups and Disaster Recovery
Have you ever heard of the IT admin that caused a natural disaster (hurricane) by not minding his backups? If he had been backing up data like he should have, everyone could have avoided the hurricane! So it goes, if you don't have good backups, disaster will strike.
There are many backup applications out there, there has been a lot of consolidation but still you have a choice. If you are looking for enterprise backup, then the only good option you had and the most widely used software was from Symantec. Even though this software is widely used, it doesn't mean it's very user friendly or even as reliable as it could or should be.
This is where a System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM) comes in from Microsoft.
We've been using DPM for quite some time now and it is what protects our infrastructure. There are several industry firsts that DPM brings to the table that other disaster recovery systems are sorely missing. I will not go into all the details, just features that have a big impact.
First I love the idea of the backup system with intelligent alerting mechanism. So if there is an alert, the system should be intelligent enough to close the alert once a resolution has been reached. This keeps IT admins from getting "alert overload".
DPM backs up your data continuously, every 15 minutes or as often as you want. This means you don't have to go to "last night's" backup, you can restore to an hour ago, or three hours ago. DPM uses the same technology built into Windows, called Shadow Copy. Instead of saving the Shadow Copies on the local hard drives, DPM picks these up and saves them on the DPM server itself. So even if the production server burns up, you can still restore you data. And, the IT administrator does not have to be involved in restores, you can give users permissions to be able to restore their own files (since DPM seamlessly integrated with Shadow Copy, it's seamless for users to restore their own files.)
There are no agents to buy with DPM. There is a standard license and an enterprise license. The enterprise license covers all agents. So if you have Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint, etc. all these applications are protected with just the enterprise license. If you want to protect workstations or files only you can get the lower cost standard license. License management is a breeze as well, the main interface in DPM will show you how many licenses you have and need.
DPM works well in environments where you need several levels of protection. For example, you can backup data to hard drive, then from hard drive to tape or to online storage. DPM also works very well with bare metal recovery. You can get new hardware and recover your server/s to pre disaster state easily and completely.
Need online server backups? Simply visit www.pcsn.net/serverbak and click on the "signup" link towards the bottom. With storage as low as $0.30 per GB-Month, it only makes sense.
Nadeem Azhar 4/24/2009
2007 Copyright PC.Solutions.Net Business process automation, information technology consulting, IT Outsourcing, HP partner, IBM partner, Microsoft partner, Secure Computing partner, GFI partner, Symantec Partner
MS DPM 2007 Bundle PCSN#A5S-00605 $1269.00 System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 is a member of the Microsoft System Center family of management products, which are designed to help IT Professionals manage their Windows Server infrastructure. First announced in September 2006, Data Protection Manager 2007 sets a new standard for Windows backup and recovery - delivering continuous data protection for Microsoft application and file servers to a seamlessly integrated secondary disk and tape solution on the Data Protection Manager server. Data Protection Manager enables rapid and reliable recovery through advanced technology for enterprises of all sizes. Product Description: Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 - complete package Category: Network backup, network - storage management Bundled with 1 E-DPML License
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NOTE: We are making a change in after hours support. In the past we used to provide critical after hours support only and we decided if a support ticket was critical or not (usually things affecting a single machine were deemed not critical and server down was deemed critical). This did not work very well, so instead of us trying to determine if a case is critical or now, we'll let you decide.
We are going to start providing after hours support at double the standard rate. So, for example, if a certain task is billed at $130/hour during regular business hours, after hours it will be $260/hour. This should cut down non critical after hours support calls where users wait until the weekend to place a support call. Also, now we'll start providing same level of support service after hours as we have during business hours. This went into effect on 4/15/2009. This does not effect pre-arranged implementations.
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