Tag Archives: Backup Technology

Shall We Replace or Upgrade the Company Server?

December 14, 2015 Stewart Parkin

Upgrades are necessary to prolong the lifetime of Linux or Windows server. RAM, modem, graphics cards and network cards are considered as easy to upgrade components. On the contrary, motherboard and OS have highly complicated upgrade process as these components need to upgrade other parts to give satisfactory results. For instance, latest RAM is also required when you are installing a new motherboard.

Usually, customers do not have an idea when they should upgrade the system and when buy latest server to carry on the tasks.

Here are a few conditions to judge the right time to change or upgrade a system:

Additional Drives

If your server is purchased just a few years ago, you can add the latest hard drives to accomplish storage needs. To add new drives, users must have SATA open port or open channel on the motherboard and RAID controller respectively.

Storage Requirement

Same model and hard drive brand need to be used when you are using a RAID system. Your system may have 500GB drive and you may need to use 2TB drive to get required outcome. On the basis of controller and RAID nature, it is possible to change one drive and then move to the next to remake the array. You can use external device to keep backup before replacing drives.

Improved Performance

To improve the performance of server, various avenues can bring into account. If your requirements are not complicated, start with upgrading primary drive. Use of an SSD to improve OS drive will impact on performance. In order to make the conversion painless, Intel and Samsung offer specific SSDs with migration software.

Range of SSDs varies from simple 256GB up to 2TB. These SSDs have enough storage capacity to run Linux or Windows. If OS is running with an SSD, performance is renounced in terms of OS receptiveness along with shutdown and boot. Moreover, OS patches take less time on SSDs.

To overcome performance issue, PCI-E latest storage drives are the best. These storage drives need 3.0 PCI-Express to work with maximum speed limit. Furthermore, these drives are used on X99 and Z97 chipsets as boot drives. These drives have capacity to work with old chipsets but work as secondary storage devices only. When applications demand first-rate performance, use PCI-E to get fastest speed.

Age and configuration of server are the two factors that determine the nature of server upgrades. Each server has certain limits. Usually servers older than a year or more are worthy to upgrade. On the other hand, servers that are used for more than three years should be replaced.

Server Replacement

IT managers are often inquired about right time to replace server. Cloud services and virtualization have made the task more complicated. Companies are using cloud services for data storage, whereas virtualization has improved the server lifespan. Still there comes a stage when server outweighs all its advantages and it becomes necessary to change the server.

Here are the three conditions when buying new server is recommended?

When server is used for three continuous years, the failure rate increases significantly. To overcome failure, replacing the aging server becomes crucial for a company.
Commercial servers have three years warranty, therefore, it is good to replace the servers before they get crashed.
An upgrade is not the only solution to cure a server. When RAID array or Windows is creating problem, reinstall the RAID or OS to keep things in order.

Backup Technology can assist you not only with your cloud backup and recovery needs, but we can also advise you when you are ready to replace or upgrade your servers.

Why Does Backup Technology Choose to Partner with Asigra?

November 2, 2015 Damien Garvey

Asigra is a disk based cloud backup and recovery software known for its certainty, dependability, as well as its ability to guarantee absolute security. It has been placed in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Disk-based Backup and Recovery in the recent reports. Among the enormous parameters that were considered for this placement was its military grade security feature. Asigra is, therefore, known as the best and most reliable backup and recovery software ever.

Asigra is unique due to its more than a quarter of a century presence in the industry of cloud backup and recovery. It has provided users with quality software since 1986, without any form of breach. Due to the fact that this software does not support open firewall ports, data stored in it cannot be hacked. The data in the data centres is stored in encrypted format, and all the files and blocked data are signed digitally.

There is a built in system admin with logical check features, and with background automated healing, which made the data stored in it to be in self-describing format. In addition, in order to protect the data against any form of compromise, the digital signatures are checked and validated regularly. Asigra is acknowledged rightly so as one of the pioneers in cloud backup encryption. Asigra is only channel driven. As such, service provides have been championing Asigra software by offering it as part of their packaged services. Asigra partners are known to be on top of their game and beat the competition.

Asigra’s encryption algorithm is FIPS certified. Encryption of data takes place from DS Client to DS System, edge to cloud, disk to archive, and is retained encrypted at the end point of the storage. There are lots of encryption protocols associated with Asigra software and customers have a choice of encryption, including: DES 56 bit with an 8-character key to AES 256 bit with 32-character key.

Additionally, Asigra software has the capability for users to retrieve their data that was encrypted with older encryption formats. There is also an option for management of the encryption key. The administrator can either self-manage or optionally allow the service provider to manage the static encryption key, which was generated at the point of subscription for the service.

Asigra security has user authentication as its central focus. For easy user definition, there are elaborate user management features. The central administrator can easily assign user IDs, rights, permissions, and passwords. The password generation and rotation features associated with Asigra software can be useful to organizations that are security conscious. For specific back up user, password can be changed randomly in order to make access to the data very secure. The entire activity of users can be logged in and tracked at the central location.

This wonderful backup and recovery software is designed for existing legal provisions and greater compliance. The automated disk based solution is known to run quietly at the background without intervention of a human being. Asigra allows the generation of aggregated data for offsite storage, on premises appliance-based backup, and the opportunity for instant recovery.

Backup Technology is proud to be Asigra’s partner since 2005 and a 3D Hybrid partner since 2010. For more information, please visit Asigra’s website: www.asigra.com

Mis-Saves—Is your Data Lost Forever?

March 25, 2015 Damien Garvey

Mis-saves happen. It is a fact of the computing world. The ‘Intelligent’ recognise the fact and provide for it. Cloud service vendors live with this reality and understand its implications. They consequently, take extraordinary efforts to ensure that mis-saves do not cause data loss for their customers.

Most cloud vendors use versioning and time stamps to distinguish between backups and protect customer data against mis-saves.

Each file that is saved into the system is tagged with a unique identifier and a time stamp. The original or the first copy of the file that is saved into the system, is called the primary file and any copies of the file saved from the same node or different nodes are identified as replicas of the original. These copies are then deleted and only one copy of the file is retained.

If changes are made to the file and it is saved into the repository, the new version of the file is compared with the existing version of the file and it is tagged as a new version with a version identifier. The backup algorithm identifies changes in the file and saves the changes to the file as a new version with references to unchanged content in the original file. Users, however, will be able to see all the content in the file version called, as data from the original file replaces the referenced sections of the file when the file is being displayed.

It follows that mis-saved files will not result in complete loss of data. Only the changes made to the new file will be lost and users can recall the original version of the file from the backup repository and redo the changes required once more. They can even use the latest version of the file that is available on the system to rebuild the lost version of the file since most cloud vendors permit users save and retain many versions of a file in the backup repository.

We, at Backup Technology, are powered by Asigra, a robust agentless cloud backup system. Our continuous backup system in place constantly monitors changes to files and saves the changed file as a new version of the file. Since new versions are created after extracting the changes and creating pointers to unchanged content—the new versions occupy less disk space and are smaller in size. Users can access versions of a single file from the storage. Additionally, the open file driver that comes with our software automatically backs up files that have been left open for long periods of time in applications such as Outlook, QuickBooks and Simply Accounting. It performs backup snapshots of data as scheduled back on to servers. So, we invite you to try our software and experience first-hand the power of always having your files saved for you automatically and constantly without conscious effort on your part!

Saving Space and Money with Data De-duplication

March 23, 2015 Rob Mackle

Like every disruptive technology, the cloud is hungrily absorbing and assimilating within itself, a number of minor innovations and utilities. Data de-duplication is one such innovation that has been successfully integrated with cloud technologies to deliver value.

Technology experts are quick to point out that data deduplication is not really a technology. It is a methodology. It is software driven process that identifies and removes data duplicates in a given data set. A single copy of the data is retained in the store, while all duplicates of the data are removed and replaced with references to the retained copy. All files that initially contained a copy of the data, now contains a reference to the data item retained in the store. Whenever the file containing the deduplicated data item is called for, an instance of the data will be inserted at the right place and a fully functional file will be generated for the user. This method of compressing data reduces the amount of disk space that is being used for data storage and reduces costs of storage.

The growing importance of de-duplication can be traced to the growing volumes of data being generated by businesses. As businesses continue to generate data, space becomes a major constraint and financial resources may have to be allocated for acquiring larger storage capacities. Consequently, any technology that allows them to “have the cake and eat it too” is welcome!

Data deduplication can be “in-line” or “post process”.

In line data deduplication is a process that de-duplicates data before it is sent to storage server. This saves on bandwidth and time-to-backup, as the amount of data being transmitted over the Internet is reduced and only the “clean” data reaches the storage server. However, the process of de-duplication at the client end of the system is itself a time consuming process and is extremely resource intensive.

Post-process de-duplication removes duplicates from the data that has been uploaded to the storage server. There is neither saving of time or bandwidth during transmission, but there is certainly a saving of processing time and client hardware resources at the point of transmission of data, since all de-duplication processes happen on the cloud vendor’s server. Modern day backup companies use a combination of the two methods for obvious advantages.

Backup Technology have integrated data-de-duplication with its cloud backup and recovery solutions. The all-in-one suites for cloud computing and online backup automatically provide data de-duplication services to the subscribing clients. The software automatically detects and deletes all duplicate data and creates appropriate references to the data during the backup process. This saves time and money and results in faster time to backup and recover. The extensive versioning that is used in tandem adds to the strength of the software as older versions of any backed up file can be recovered — even if it was deleted from the source computer. For these and other similar reasons, we invite you to try our award winning cloud backup and disaster recovery and business continuity services, powered by Asigra. We are confident that you will be completely satisfied with what we have to offer!