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Backup & Disaster Recovery with

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In today’s unstoppable global economy, nothing is more critical than keeping your IT infrastructure available around the clock. To do this, you need a smart backup and disaster recovery plan.

In this eBook, we’re going to discuss all elements of backup and disaster recovery. Answering the question of whether your business needs a backup and disaster recovery plan, listing what can happen if you don’t protect your data, and explaining the problems and limitations of some backup and disaster recovery solutions.

Introduction

Introduction...................................................................................

Does my Business need Backup & Disaster Recovery..............

The Risk.......................................................................................

Problems & Limitations.............................................................. A plan for when things don’t go to Plan....................................

Solutions snapshat.................................................................

About Cogeco Peer1..................................................................

Contents

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Does my Business Really NeedBackup & Disaster Recovery?

How would you possibly get that data back without a backup and disaster recovery plan?The bottom line is: You wouldn’t.Studies have found that 93% of companies that lost their data centre for 10 days or more filed for bankruptcy within one year. 50% of businesses that found themselves without data management for this same period filed for bankruptcy immediately.

A strategic backup and disaster recovery plan is essential for keeping your business afloat during difficult times. Think of it as an insurance policy for your data.

So, yes. Your business most certainly needs backup and disaster recovery.

YesWell, if you rely on your applications, operations, and critical data in order to run your business, that is.

You may, like a lot of business owners and IT decision makers, think that your data is safe onsite, or offsite in the cloud. And for the most part, you’d be correct to think that. But disasters can happen to anyone, and they can strike at any time.

How would your business recover if something out of your control happened?

For example, if a flood destroyed everything in your data centre, or a new user accidentally deleted an important application from the cloud.

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The Risk

malfunction. Although there are a few methods to recover data from faulty hard drives, all of these are expensive.

There are many causes of data loss that can put your business at risk if you do not implement a backup and disaster recovery solution. Among the most common are: machine error, human error, viruses, and natural disasters.

Machine ErrorTechnology is evolving all the time, and allowing us to automate more and more tasks. But the more tasks we automate, the more we rely on technology.

This can be risky, because if machines fail, we are set to lose a lot, if not all, of our data. And computers are fragile. In fact the most common cause of data loss is through hardware and system

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VirusesNo matter what anti-virus software you implement, you are always at risk of viruses attacking your system -- because more complex viruses are being created all the time. The best thing to protect you from such causes of data loss, in addition to having strong firewalls, is to have a great backup system in place.

Human Error

Human error can be either malicious or accidental. Malicious errors aren’t as common as accidental errors, but they still occur. For example, a disgruntled employee could access the system and delete important files on purpose for malicious means.

Accidental error is more common, and can range from a number of things, for example, a new user making a mistake, or someone accidentally spilling liquids on hardware. Human error is a lot harder to regulate than any other cause of data loss, but ensuring data is backed up regularly will reduce the risks caused by this.

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Natural DisastersNatural disasters don’t occur often, but when they do, the results can be devastating. Take a look around your office...earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes, and ice storms can destroy all of your data in a matter of minutes.

Waiting until a natural disaster is imminent is too late to be thinking about your backup plan. You need to be prepared. Customers expect your business to be there 24/7. They won’t sympathize if you need to close for a period to pick yourself up after a natural disaster.

Data loss can cause many risks for your business. If you have to close for a short period after a natural disaster, result in a huge lack of productivity. Or, if a virus hacks your system and publicly displays your customers’ data, your business could be in serious jeopardy for lack of compliance.

When it comes to data loss, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

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As great as it would be, purchasing and setting up a backup and disaster recovery solution will not end all of your data loss worries and problems.

In order to trust in your solution, you need to test it regularly. After all, glitches can (and do) happen, and, as mentioned above, hardware failing is one of the most common causes of data loss. Planning will give you an understanding of just how much time it would take you to get your business up and running again, should a disaster occur.

In this unstoppable business era, customers can be demanding. If your customers expect you to be up and running just a few hours, or even minutes, after suffering from data loss, then you need to plan to make sure that will happen.

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Problems & Limitations

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If speed is your main concern when it comes to disaster recovery, then you need to ensure that your plan is tailored to that. Organizations that require immediate recovery should look into solutions that are geographically far enough to not be affected by the same disaster, but close enough to reduce latency.

Speed isn’t the only limitation, what about security?

Businesses that need their solution to be secure should consider remote (or offsite) backup services. These will provide an additional layer of security by ensuring that our physical infrastructure is resilient and allowing frequent backups to take place.

Here at Cogeco Peer 1, we believe that one size fits no one. We work closely with our clients to understand their business goals, work within their budget constraints, and overall, deliver a complete, tailored solution based on proven, reliable platforms. All of which provides unstoppable IT for the unstoppable business era.

The bottom line is: The best backup and disaster recovery option will always depend on what you need as a business.

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• Tailored Solutions

• Disk Backup

• Bare-metal Servers

• Operating Systems

• Offsite Tape Archival

• Database Recovery

• Data Restoration

• File Recovery

• Virtual Machine Recovery

At Cogeco Peer 1, we have everything you need to create your own, tailored backup and disaster recovery plan. You have the opportunity to design a solution that meets your data retention needs, recovery point, and time objectives.

Our backup and disaster recovery solutions encompass:

A Plan for When Things Don’t Go to Plan

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Solutions Snapshot

Offsite tape archivalTape archival refers to the backup of your data onto a tape medium, transport of the tapes in a secure, climate controlled vehicle, and the long term storage of tapes within a secure, climate controlled vault.

Data restorationOnce you have identified the target location for where you would like us to restore your data, we can commence the restore process. Restoral of data stored onsite will begin within 60 minutes of us receiving a request. Restoral of data stored offsite will begin within 60 minutes of us receiving the media from the offsite storage location.

Whether you opt for online or offline database backup, we’ve got you covered.

We support several data disposal options, including the erasing of any hard drive based backup data housed within our data centres and secure disposal of tapes via a commercial shredding service.

Data lifecycle management and disposal

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DATA

Tailored disaster recovery replication solutions

A disaster recovery replication solution is a business continuity method to help protect mission critical servers, virtual machines, and applications from both hardware and software failures. The process of replication ensures that every change made to a primary environment is replicated to a secondary environment.

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Cogeco Peer 1 is a global provider of essential business-to-business products and services. With 20 data centres and more than 50 points-of-presence in North America and Europe combined, we are a trusted partner to businesses small, medium and large. We provide the ability to access, move, manage and store mission-critical data worldwide, backed by superior customer support.

About Cogeco Peer 1

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