When a small to medium business (SMB) with five or more employees experiences a minor system failure involving a single workstation, the loss can be easily resolved by a Sea to Sky technician. The faulty workstation can be taken apart and the data can, for the most part, be salvaged. This is great news, but what if the disaster was of a larger scale, affecting more than one computer on your network – or the server itself? Additionally, the data you lost could be time sensitive; what can a SMB do to avoid these scenarios? Sea to Sky Network Solutions has conducted in depth research on the issue as part of our Business Continuity Planning (BCP) strategy for SMB network designs. Our solution will allow your business to continue functioning, just as it was fifteen minutes prior to a complete server malfunction. The proceeding information will help the reader appreciate the importance of a Sea to Sky Backup & Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution. This paper will help explain how a BDR can very quickly become the difference between the success and failure of your SMB.
A Sea to Sky BDR solution will provide your company with a redundant onsite server backup in the event of a server failure. This means that in the event of a server breakdown your business can continue to access files, send emails and conduct business as usual in the state the network was in fifteen minutes prior to the event. A Sea to Sky BDR represents the next generation of backup systems because it can temporarily replicate your server’s functions. This product includes a physical appliance attached to the network in your office, and software that allows the Sea to Sky monitoring centre to detect a system failure and respond to the alert. Implementing this solution will provide your company with a level of guaranteed productivity that was unattainable just a few years ago. The automation of this system will reduce your IT costs when compared to the common manual backup method of using tape drives which require staff facilitation to load, transport and store off-site on a daily basis.
The second advantage of a Sea to Sky BDR solution is the cloud computing integration of your BDR backups in the event of a more catastrophic incidence. Insurance can replace your hardware and software, but it cannot replace the intellectual property that is saved on your local network. Onsite storage of data leaves your SMB open to complete loss in the event of a fire, flood (including sprinkler systems), earthquake or theft. To address these concerns Sea to Sky BDRs connect to our secure offsite data centers in different geographical locations across North America. These offsite backups are stored on secure servers that save your information in a format that uses AES-256 bit encryption. This is the same level of encryption that banks use for their online applications.
During the transfer process the BDR sends information in packets. This means that your backup transfers will not have to restart in the event of a lost connection; it will simply start from the last successful packet transfer. This service will save you time (because you will not have to restart the transfer from the beginning) and money (when monthly bandwidth cost for your internet connection are considered).
Finally, Sea to Sky knows that all computers eventually fail and we recognize that after a failure our clients want to get back to business as soon as possible. That is why our BDR solutions replicate data at the ‘block level’ as 1’s and 0’s. This means that your hardware can completely fail and you will be able upload an exact image of your data on to a completely different replacement computer. This technology benefits our customers because they will not be obligated to spend hours reconfiguring their settings on the new machine.
With a Sea to Sky BDR Solution your company can keep full images of your data safe. The solution provides your SMB with a 24/7/365 backup system that is automated, secure and fully redundant in the event of a disaster. The Sea to Sky team is devoted to client success. We strive to provide the most efficient and economical solutions through our R&D and BCP methodologies. If you have any questions about Sea to Sky Network Solutions, our BDR solutions or our Managed Service packages please feel free to contact us via e-mail at info@seatosky.com, or by phone at 604.628.6970
