WDTalk

Is your mission critical data backed up and protected?

A quick Google search for remote backup software returned 6,810,000 results. I’d say that’s significant. I think everyone agrees that mission critical data needs to be backed up, but how is debatable. In the hundreds of businesses I’ve serviced over the years, most in-house IT departments used DAT tapes. Very few actually physically removed those tapes from their premises every day. Even fewer remotely backed up their data. So maybe the better question to ask would be, “To what degree is your mission critical data backed up and protected?”

As an ex-RMA Manager (for a local networking firm), I witnessed quite a few defective DAT drives doing hard time on my shelves. I’ve also seen my share of managers scrambling to recover lost data following “unscheduled events” like virus contamination or hacks. Do you think it can’t happen to you? Keeping your fingers crossed isn’t the wisest strategy to ensure your business’s continued success.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans are Important
I always recommend incorporating comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plans, then periodically reviewing their effectiveness. One part of that plan should be remote offsite backups. Very often, incorporating a remote backup is as easy as downloading a software client onto your network server or personal computer. Many have setup wizards to walk you through the steps of connecting to the backup server, setting up your backup sets, creating a backup schedule and setting a secret encryption key. Typically, backup sets can be configured to run in a variety of ways – backing up data files at the end of the week or your My Documents folder multiple times per day.

Remote backups traveling across the Internet need to be encrypted so that you and only you have the ability to decrypt your data. I recommend programs that use DES, Triple-DES, Blowfish or Twofish algorithms for encryption.

Measuring the success of the data transfer is important. Look for programs with email notification of successful backups or backups with warnings (with log files attached).

Once your data is remotely backed up
Ok, you’ve backed up your data, but now have a need for one file, or an entire volume of data from two months ago. Is this possible? Simply answered – Yes. There are programs that allow instant access to any version of your data files, from the initial backup to the last incremental backup and EVERY version in between.

Locking down clients
Locking down clients simply refers to implementing procedures to protect critical backup sets from being accidentally changed or deleted, while flexible enough for administers to view and change those settings that control the level of usage each client is offered.

When to backup?
Most organizations schedule backups in the evening, during lulls in their business operations. Some programs allow you to run in silent modes (in the background) without displaying any Windows or Task Bar icons – allowing you to run backups throughout the day.

What if my backup gets interrupted?
Let’s say you start a backup and you lose power. Will the remote server retain the ongoing transfer, or bite the bullet? Features like event managers allow you to resume interrupted backups.

Does remote backup software offer file filters?
Most do offer file filters that allow you to include or exclude files from the backup selection, mostly via file extensions.

Just the tip of the iceberg
There are so many things that can and do go wrong in business every day. One thing is for sure – if you have hardware, particularly IT hardware, it will go down sooner or later. Power supplies fail, memory modules flake out, hard drives crash, DAT drives melt down – stuff happens. Some issues can be resolved in minutes or hours, but others may take days or weeks.

Backing up your mission critical data is – an integral ingredient to averting disaster, but just the tip of the iceberg in developing and managing a comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plan that will ensure your business’s continued success. Step back and ask yourself, “What if?” What if a disgruntled employee, possibly a sysadmin, corrupted your main servers, then disappeared? What if your building burnt to the ground? What if that DAT drive refuses to release last night’s tape – holding it hostage with a strangle hold on its recording heads? What if?

• Physical space
  • Rack
  • Servers
  • UPS
  • Switch
  • Router
  • Diesel Fuel Generator
  • Firewall Appliance
  • Security Systems
  • Demarcation
• IT Staff
  • Certified
  • Trustworthy
  • Reliable
  • Elevated reimbursement plus benefits
  • Available 24/7/365
• Location
  • Expandable connectivity available to your location (s).
• Climate control
  • Sensor alarms for temperature, moisture, smoke, etc.
• Physical security
  • Locked server room with assigned access privileges
• Network Monitoring
  • Hardware/Software investment
  • Email Alerts
  • IT staff on call 24/7/365

Colocation offers a very cost-effective means of housing a secure hosting environment. Physical space is freed in-house, plus capital asset expense is dramatically reduced.

In-house – Few businesses can afford dual diesel fuel backup generators and none have the ability to cross-connect to different vendors. Managing an IT staff layers substantial payroll expense and man-hours. Disaster recovery plans are typically DAT tape backups and are rarely compliant.

Climate controls depend over whether the cleaning lady left the door to your server room open. Often there is no door – simply open access to your most valued resource – your data. Companies who have lost data fail at an alarming rate.

Scalability is limited and monitoring is more often than not a user complaining he/she can’t get their email, surf the Internet or receive calls.

Colocation – offers

• BGP networks for maximum uptime and reliability (blended)
• Remote Hands Support
• Redundant power sources
  • Power grids
  • UPS
  • Diesel fuel generators
• Cross-connects (e.g., Cogent, SAVVIS and Level3)
• Physical security
• Electronic security
• Network monitoring
• Alarm sensors
  • Temperature
  • Moisture
  • Smoke
  • Fire
• Scalability
  • Cabinet and rack space
  • Bandwidth

Colocation services can be quickly deployed (no wait time to provision new circuits) and are easily expanded.

Businesses are migrating to colocation because it simply makes good ‘business sense.’

Hostirian is now offering FREE Uptime Monitoring For Everyone

Sign Up Now

Overview

We monitor server availability, performance and security externally from our monitoring stations located in carrier-class data centers.

24 x 7 x 365 Monitoring

Unless you are a robot, it is not feasible for you to keep checking your website or server to see if it is available. Leave this tedious job to our automated service, and enjoy peace of mind!

Support of major Internet protocols

Monitoring of the major server types found on the Internet:

• your servers (PING)
• your IMAP4 servers (IMAP4)
• your web servers (HTTP)
• your secured web servers (HTTPS)
• your mail servers (SMTP and POP)
• your MySQL servers (MySQL)
• your file servers (FTP)
• your domain name servers (DNS)
• your services based directly on TCP

Uptime & Performance Reports

Do you know the uptime and performance of your website or server? We make all these available to you in easy-to-read reports.

Downtime Notification

Be the first to know when your website or server is in trouble! We notify via email Easy to Use  No complicated software to install; all you need is a web browser.

FAQs

1. Can I use your software on my web site? We do not allow other sites to run our software but you may link to any of our pages from your site.

2. Do I need to download or install anything to use Hostirian’s Up Time Monitoring? No, all monitoring services work remotely from our servers. All you need to do is login to your password protected member area to use our service. You will be able to view account history details and have results emailed to you.

3. How can I contact Hostirian? You may send an email to support@hostirian.com

4. How do you determine if a server is up? Our software checks the server response code from your host and if the server response code is “200″, “302″, “301″, “403″ or “401″, your hostname is considered “up”.

5. How far back do you keep monitoring statistics for my account? Detailed statistics for each domain are kept for 2 months while statistic summaries are kept for the life of the account. All statistics for our premium accounts are keep for the life of the account.

6. How many domains can I monitor? You may select the monitoring interval that you want for each domain.

7. We already have an internal monitoring system. Why would we need your system? The Internet is a node/gateway based system. Your internal monitoring may tell you that a device is broken inside your network or even that the outbound gateway is having problems, but it may not inform you that inbound connections from different nodes on the Internet are able to access your website. Hostirian provides monitoring from various geographically diverse locations on different networks.

8. What are the costs for your services? Hostirian provides all of our basic services free of charge. We ask only that you register as a member.

9. What protocols do you support? We support: HTTP, FTP, POP3, SMTP. Additional protocols are available with our premium services.

Sign Up Now

Unfortunately, a ton of websites get hacked or defaced everyday around the Globe. I’ve seen statistics that state up to 90% of all hacked websites are related to (CMS) – Joomla or WordPress, at least those not related to compromised cPanel logins. And apparently Joomla gets hacked twice as much as WordPress.

I believe all websites are vulnerable to attacks, but Joomla and WordPress more so because of their popularity. There are shell / cracking scripts specifically written for both. These cracking scripts are installed using the default database table prefixes which are jos_ and wp_, and in the case of Joomla, FTP functions which are enabled but never used.

Some recommendations to help protect your websites:

Use secure passwords like 4#gty+TeQ^Rf37! (take the guesswork out of play).

Change your default admin login

Delete all the stuff you don’t use, including templates and plugins. This includes Hello Dolly, twentyten, twentyeleven and ASKIMET.

With WordPress, disallow bots from scanning crucial directories by adding Disallow: /wp-* in your robots.txt file. And CHMOD your wp-config.php file to 640.

Keep your CMS websites updated to the latest version, and recheck your security settings after each version update.

And don’t use anything related to timthumb.

I read some predictions this morning that really opened my mind to the possibility of mobile, and the most significant was that 2/3 of mobile traffic would be consumed by video. Here’s the predictions:

A prediction for the future of smartphone growth makes some bold projections:

By the end of this year, there could be more smartphones on the planet than humans, and by 2016 there could be 10 billion smartphones. That’s 1.4 mobile devices per capita.

In its global mobile data traffic forecast, Cisco predicts that a solid chunk of growth will come from the Middle East and Africa, with a compound annual growth rate of 104%, followed by Asia Pacific with 84% growth.

What will people be doing with their smartphones in the coming years? Cisco predicts that by 2016 two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be from videos, increasing 25-fold between now and then. ^[1]  source

I knew YouTube had grown to the second largest search engine in the world, surpassing Bing, Yahoo and Facebook, but these numbers are staggering.

Cisco’s prediction includes more than just smartphones, though. It also takes into account tablets, laptops, handheld gaming consoles, e-readers, in-car entertainment systems, digital photo frames, cameras, and machine-to-machine modules.

Cisco believes all of these gadgets combined will put the total number of mobile-connected devices over 10 billion by 2016. This expected 18-fold growth by 2016 is certainly believable, given that in 2011 global mobile data traffic doubled for the fourth year in a row. ^[2] source

App developers have to be loving these predictions.

River City Internet Group

River City Internet Group (RCIG) is an Internet delivery ‘holding company.’ RCIG (http://www.rcig.net) is a Missouri Corporation founded in 2001 that owns or invests in companies that are predominantly focused on providing Enterprise and Carrier class Internet solutions.

Through its wholly owned companies, RCIG offers a broad array of Internet solutions.

• Internet Access- MetroEthernet, OC3, DS3 and T-1 (Primary Network)
• Hosting - Colocation, Dedicated Servers and Shared Hosting (Hostirian)
• Network Monitoring Management (NPG)
• Off site data protection (E-Backups) for a variety of of industries including financial services, legal, health care, banking, state and local government, and manufacturing.

River City Internet Group is committed to fulfilling solutions for their customers in a complete, flexible, scalable and professional manner. Their customers rely upon Hostirian’s expertise in enterprise hosting, as well as other technicial matters – offering superior network connectivity, an unmatched guarantee and accommodating terms, making RCIG a logical business partner.

Hostirian

Hostirian (http://www.hostirian.com) is a leading web hosting and colocation provider in the Saint Louis area. By focusing only on web hosting and colocation, Hostirian is able to provide a level of customer support and consultation that remains unmatched by other providers, and at a cost substantially less than national web hosting companies. Hostirian offers shared and fully managed web hosting services, and colocation to businesses operating mission critical systems. Hostirian also offers web hosting services to a growing number of application service providers, enabling them to more efficiently deliver application services to their customers over the Internet. Hostirian also offers related value-added services, such as fully managed firewall services, and consulting services (including capacity and migration planning).

Hostirian provides 24x7x365 live telephone technical support, including customer requests for server re-boots (provided at no charge). Hostirian also manages two network operation centers, monitoring servers – then notifying customers when alerts are necessary - to ascertain what course of action the customer desires Hostirian to initiate. Hostirian guarantees a 15 minute response time to begin evaluation of any problem (24x7x365). The customer is given an Escalation List that contains the office and cell phone numbers of the actual engineers responsible for and most familiar with their hosted architecture.

Hostirian manages three data centers. See Tour and Technical Specifications at (www.hostirian.com/tour/)

• Network Services Headquarters
  11756 Borman Drive
  Saint Louis, Missouri 63146

• Bandwidth Exchange Building
  900 Walnut
  St. Louis, MO 63102

• Globe Building
  710 N. Tucker
  St. Louis, MO 63101

Hostirian understands bandwidth and network redundancy requirements. In it’s downtown data center, Hostirian offers free cross connects from the ‘meet me’ room for providers who supply an extension to the customer’s rack or cage. Current promotions include an assortment of plans with 2U, 10U, rack or full cage options – ranging from $99 to $4000. Each plan has an allotment of bandwidth in Mbps, power, set up options, and guaranteed uptime SLAs.

Hostirian is the fastest growing and most reliable web hosting company in the Saint Louis region. It is profitable, consistently adding significant new web hosting business each month. And it has a track record of greater than 99.9% uptime.

More importantly, every customer receives the ‘home town’ and individual attention that it deserves – so that they can do what they do best – run their business.

Just today, I was asked for a recommendation in coming up with a name for a new forum - in a custom niche. I know this sounds easy, but it seems that every conceivable combination of English words has been taken, and is currently either active or parked. The registrar always suggests other combinations, but I’ve yet to find one in my queries that fits what I’m  searching for.

Maybe this is just one of my many pet peeves - but an astonishing number of domains are parked, especially with highly competitive keywords. Cracking that egg requires a sledge hammer the size of my SUV. I did find one this morning I really liked, but the sale price was over $6000.00. My budget is around $12

There are services where you can sell and purchase domain names - like SEDO, but then I’d miss the challenge and frustration, and sometimes the thrill of finding a name that is actually available.