Digital Fortress DigitaLifeline

Business Continuity Services

Digital Fortress, Inc. 14080 Nacogdoches Rd Suite 275 San Antonio, TX 78247 Phone 866-932-2587 Fax 866-261-3598 Outside of U.S. call 1-210-857-5298

A Comparison of Popular Backup Methods vs the DigitaLifeline Data & System Protection System
Tape Drives
By far, the most popular method of backup. There are dozens to choose from, but a good representative for small to medium sized businesses is the Travan CT 40 Desktop, which will backup 20 Gigabytes (GB) per tape without compression, or 40 GB with compression. Total cost of ownership (See Backup Practices: How to Stash Your Stuff, by Anne Lear for best practices tape backup procedure): Initial number of tapes required (assuming 5-day workweek) Number of tapes consumed quarterly for archiving and off-site storage Tape drive (Average price online) 23 tapes @ $57 each (Office Depot) Total Startup Cost On-going cost of 12 tapes/quarter @57 (Monthly equivalent) Annual cost of tapes Total cost for first year Now add the non-financial burdens: Labor-intensive. The tapes must be used in an exact order for the system to work. Time-consuming. To restore just one file from, say, last week, you have to: o Go back to last week's full backup o Each day's incremental backup o Since tapes are sequential in nature (the data is strung out like a movie on a VCR tape, and if your data is toward the end of the tape, you have to scan through almost the whole tape to get to your data), that could take several hours per tape. o If you need to go through 3 or more tapes, you could spend a whole day just getting one file back. Noting the above paragraph, test restores to verify the integrity of your backup can also be time-consuming and difficult. $350 $1,311 $1,661 $684 $228 $2,736 $4,397 23 12

Tape backup units and the tapes themselves are also very complicated and labor-intensive, and prone to error:

The tape drive itself must be cleaned on a regular basis. From the Travan users manual:

We recommend periodic cleaning of the tape drive mechanism using an approved dryprocess Travan cleaning cartridge. Generally, the more severe the operating conditions (the greater the amount of dust or moisture in the air), the more often the drive should be cleaned. Be sure to clean the drive immediately if you observe an increase in the number of errors while running your backup software, or if a TapeAlert cleaning message is displayed. With the newer generation of Travan tape drive heads used in these drives, only the dryprocess cleaning-cartridge method is recommended. This method does not involve any flammable materials and provides a clean recording surface by wiping away debris as the cleaning material passes across the recording head.

Also, Travan recommends that the tapes themselves be retensioned frequently. Again, from the Travan users guide:
Travan tapes must be retensioned frequently to ensure data integrity and optimize drive performance. Retensioning involves running the entire tape through the drive, from beginning to end. For optimum performance, cartridges used for daily backups should be retensioned prior to each use. Your backup software automatically retensions the tape before each backup and restore operation. However, if you ever have a problem reading a tape, manual retensioning (using your backup software) may solve the problem. We recommend retensioning whenever: A cartridge is being used for the first time A cartridge has not been used for over a month A cartridge has been dropped A cartridge has been shipped A cartridge has been exposed to a significant change in temperature

Out of the 17-page Travan user manual, 3 pages are devoted to troubleshooting why the tape drive might not work. Additionally, a survey taken in March 2004 showed that 42 percent of tape drive owners had been unable to restore data from tape backups: Source: Sunbelt W2Knews Electronic Newsletter Mon, Apr 5, 2004 (Vol. 9, #14 - Issue #470) The Tape Reliability Challenge ... A Yankee Group and Sunbelt Software survey of 362 IT executives in March 2004 found 42 percent of respondents had been unable to recover data from tape in the last year as a result of tape unreliability.

Tape systems are difficult to expand if your business expands and computer data increases.

Tapes are not encrypted, so if the tapes are stolen, the thief could read them and have full access to all of your business and personal data. If your equipment is stolen or vandalized, or your building is damaged by fire, flood or other disaster, both your computer and backups are lost forever. $0 $150 $1,800 $1,800 Percent of tape cost 66% Percent of tape cost 41%

Initial Investment Monthly fee to backup 10 GB Annual cost Total cost for first year

Now compare tapes to the DigitaLifeline Data Protection System

Now look at the intangibles for off-site backup: Fully automated. Once set up, it runs completely unattended. No complicated hardware to maintain, adjust or retension. To restore a file: o Just start up the software o Click the Restore tab o Choose which date of the file (you can store up to 30 separate daily versions) you want to restore o Locate it in a Windows Explorer-type screen. o Select the file by clicking on a check-box o Click the Restore Now button, and it shoots over to you over the Internet. Time spent less than five minutes. The same applies to test restores. If you need to restore a version of the file(s) older than 30 days, Digital Fortress can use its extensive backups to retrieve your data all the way back to the first day you started with us. Productivity is vastly increased with off-site backup. Off-site backup is extremely easy to expand. Your data is encrypted with at least 128 bit encryption, and if someone could magically take all of the computers in the world today, and force them all to work on breaking into your data, it would take several billion years! If your equipment is stolen or vandalized, or your building is damaged by fire, flood or other disaster, your data is safe and sound in Digital Fortress off-site backup servers, ready to be recovered at an instants notice.

CD/DVD Burners
Some business owners are turning to CD or DVD burners to backup their data. At first glance, these have a lot of advantages, even over DigitaLayer One, off-site backup. Their cost has plummeted in recent years. A good burner can be had for less than $100 CDs, which hold 700 Megabytes (MB) are less than 50 cents each, and blank DVDs, which hold 4.34 GB, now cost $1 each or less The software that comes bundled free with the burners makes the task easy

But this method of backup is not without problems. Backing up this way is a manual task While its still a novelty, people will generally perform it willingly, but as time goes by, it becomes a commonplace chore, a nuisance If the person in charge of doing the backup quits, gets fired or reassigned, the backups may stop without anyone being aware of it If someone is assigned to take the CD/DVD home with them, well, have you ever lost anything at home? Especially something as small as a box of CDs? If someone is assigned to take the CD/DVD home with them, they are also susceptible to theft The backups are not encrypted. If the backups are lost or stolen, confidential data can fall into the wrong hands. If the data contains personal financial or medical information, the business owner can face grave consequences.

The Problem With Data-Only Backups

Imagine a dentists office. They backup with CDs and take them off-site every night without fail. Then theres a fire, and the office burns to the ground. Lets say the dentist was able to rent some space and equipment for the next day. GOOD: They have the backed-up data BAD: Without the scheduling program, they dont know whos due to come in. BAD: Without the patient record program, they have no way of contacting their patients. BAD: Without the billing program, they cant send out bills, even though they have all the data.

To be sure, theyll be able to get new copies of the programs, but how long will that take? Just having the current data isnt enough. The unlucky dentist also needs to be able to restore system data.

The Solution: System Backup and Restore

By exploiting the full potential of the enterprise-grade backup software that we use, our dentist can save the entire operating system, programs, passwords, and settings, along with every change and update on a daily basis. Most people never think of this, but having a full system backup can literally save weeks of time if it becomes necessary to restore a system that has completely crashed or been destroyed due to fire, flood, or other disaster. If you ever suffer a complete hard drive failure, or your computer is destroyed, you will absolutely require a full system backup so that you can restore your data from the off-site servers. This is how it works. Here you have a healthy system that you have backed up to the Digital Fortress off-site servers.

Now our dentists hard drive has become corrupted and unreadable.

Back in the old days, You would have had to format the drive, Find all of your software and serial numbers, Reinstall the operating system, go thru all of the updates and patches, Reinstall all of your programs, Try to re-create all of the custom features that you put in over the years

And this could take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks, and after all that you could STILL be having problems computers might not be seeing each other, network printers might not work, your computer could be having trouble connecting to the Internet, and all the while, work is piling up, youre spending a small fortune on computer techs, and life is just not being a bowl of cherries. But things work differently in the DigitaLifeline era. Now, you just restore your system back to the new hard drive, or even an entirely new computer if the existing one is beyond repair. This can be done over the Internet, or if a very large amount of data is involved, we can overnight you backup media. The result back to work and good as new! Lets sum up here: Old way, lots of trouble. DigitaLifeline way, just restore backed-up system to hard drive. Everything works again within a matter of hours. Then a quick download over the Internet using DigitaLifeline Off-site backup, and all of the current data could be restored, and our dentist would truly be back in business!