Your data IS Your Business: Dynamic data

In my previous post on data protection, we discussed the three types of Small Business data:

• Dynamic data
• Active data
• Archive data

There are different methods required to best protect the different types of data your Small Business depends on. Note that I said "protect", and not "backup" you data. Backing up your data is the most important part of protecting it. But steps must be taken before and after backup to make sure the process actually provides protection, and not just repeated activity.

Before backing up your data, you must determine two things: 1) which data will you backup? and 2) how frequently will you backup that data? The answers vary depending on which of type of data we're considering.

After backup, the most important questions are: 1) how long will you keep that backup? and 2) how many different versions of this backup do you want, and why? These questions, no doubt, are answered differently, based upon the type of data being considered.

Dynamic data, being the most important, comes first - it's what your Small Business is working on right now. Today's email correspondence, the document that will become an email attachment as soon as it's completed. Even your web browser bookmarks have a greater business impact than you might realize. It's "Dynamic", after all: you must have the current version of whatever document, diagram, link or bookmark you depend upon for your Small Business to compete and function effectively.

The fact that is often overlooked by Small Businesses is that dynamic data not only has to be backed up, but backed up dynamically. Last night's version of a file you've been working on for hours is no help if your computer's disk dies, or you corrupt or overwrite the file. Scheduled nightly backups are fine for protecting active data, but to protect your dynamic data, you need more frequent backups.

The problem with this suggestion is that you are simply not going to perform  six, eight, ten or more backups a day... you're too busy running your business, and the backup process is too complex and involved to justify the distraction and disruption. Fortunately, this issue has been confronted by the huge mega-corporations' IT departments, given a name - Continuous Data Protection - and more importantly, they've given us a solution.

What you need is a program that will backup your dynamic data either at regularly scheduled intervals throughout the day, or as the data actually changes. Or one that does both, like IBM Tivoli CDP for files. Now, while I do prefer to recommend Open Source software when it provides the best solutions for your Small Buiness, sometimes, the best solution is a commercial product.

With IBM Tivoli CDP for files, you can:

• back up all your dynamic data, both on a schedule and whenever it changes. 
• backup to as many as three different locations, for extra protection. 
• start protecting your data instead of spending hours learning how to setup the program.

It has a simple, web-based interface, making it easy to add files and folders to its intelligent set of defaults, identify which data is being backed up, how much space is available in your backup locations and, most importantly, to retrieve the proper version of any backed up file when you need it most -- usually, in the middle of a tense situation, when you don't have the time to struggle with a complicated retrieval process.

Most importantly, it's affordable - only $44 per machine. Set up properly, you can save all of your important data to a folder shared between several PCs, then protect that one folder with IBM Tivoli CDP. And then just work,  knowing that your most important data has the best protection you can provide.

Next post, I'll cover the four "before and after questions" raised at the beginning of this post, and show you how a product like Tivoli CDP can be used to answer them. Until then, be well.

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Your Operating System is smarter than you are...

Last week, I paid my friend Billy in Weehawken, NJ a visit, to help him with his computer troubles. Since he installed iTunes last year, his Windows Vista laptop could not access his CD/DVD drive.

Now, it often failed to power up, igniting the sytem lights and spinning the fan before abruptly powering down. It took the "three finger salute": Ctrl-Alt-Del, to break this vicious loop and finally boot normally.
Since I had the Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate 1 and activation keys, I suggested he upgrade.

My experiences with Windows 7 have been quite positive, and all my business clients have avoided Vista at my advice. On the strength of my recommendation, he decided to take the plunge.

I brought a 250 GB external hard drive, intending to use DriveImage XML to image his hard drive, in case of any problem during the upgrade process. As this was his only computer, I didn't want to risk leaving him stuck in limbo, his former operating system gone but the new one not yet in place.

But the onboard CD/DVD was offline, and the BIOS of his HP laptop recognized USB floppy and USB hard drive as boot devices, but NOT USB CD/DVD. And I had left my Ultimate Boot CD for Windows bootable USB key across the Hudson, in Manhattan.

So we figure we would trust the good folks in Redmond, and proceed with the upgrade in full faith it would succeed as planned. It took a reboot or two to realize that there was a slightly counter-logical pre-stage

• CANCEL the upgrade, 
• REBOOT once and then
• RESTART the upgrade.

User account settings are captured and stored during that first phase; after that, it was the typical boring process of progress bars, check marks and the blur of files being expanded and transferred.

And then... the absolute worst case scenario occured. The pet beagle knocked out the power cable -- although this was a laptop, my friend had removed the battery to cut down on a little heat, since he ran the laptop pretty much all day. So, one second the upgrade was 85% complete and the next second, the screen was black.

While Billy restored the power I smacked myself for this ridiculous oversight, and held my breath. Normally, this power crash would have rendered this computer inert, require a reformat and complete reinstall, if not completely ruined.

When we pressed the power button, instead... was the typical post-BIOS Windows boot screen, with two options. The boot option that immediately caught my eye was the second, which read "Windows 7". I wondered: "Was it possible that we could simply pick up where we had left it?"

No, it wasn't. But after a couple false starts, I reconsidered the boot options, and selected the first boot option: Windows Rollback. As I had hoped while holding my breath, waiting for the power to be restored, Windows after XP has gotten a lot smarter. The upgrade process left the Vista install unchanged until it was 100% complete. The rollback was so exacting, the boot cycle errors even returned.

It took another several hours, since we had to start again from the beginning. But the grill was hot, the drinks refreshing, and the upgrade completely successful. It transferred his applications, his desktop icons, even his wallpaper photo - a shot from the stage of CBGBs, back in the day.

Not all change is good, but I can attest that the Windows upgrade system has definitely improved since the days it took a stack of floppies and a lot of luck.

Now, it seems, it can even survive catastrophic user error...

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Your Data IS Your Business

Even if your firm or organization doesn't "do computers" by trade, computers are probably more important than you realize to your Small Business.

A lot of key information that was once kept in metal filing cabinets and on cardboard Rolodex cards is now more easily and accurately stored on computers.  Large amounts of information - data, in geek-speak - are stored primarily - if not exclusively - on your Small Business computers. E-mails. Electronic documents of all kinds: contracts, proposals, invoices, resumes, receipts. Contact information for clients, vendors, and other business associates.

To avoid finding yourself and/or your Small Business exposed to the sudden loss of critical, irreplaceable data, you've got to determine what is important data, and make certain you protect it. A blog can't identify all of your critical data for you, but it can help you discover what the three main categories of business data are, and get an idea of the best methods for protecting each.

• Dynamic data
• Active data
• Archive data

In short, there's the information you're working on right now (Dynamic data), the information you consume and create in the course of working (Active data), and finally the information your store for reference and compliance purposes (Archive data).

Dynamic data is stuff like: your email Inbox; the draft of a proposal to a potential client; digital photographs newly transferred from your camera or cell phone for business purposes. This data may be so new, it isn't in it's finished state. Should you lose it, you'll most likely be unable to reproduce or precisely recreate it.

Active data is more stable, but no less important. It's information like your central contact list - with all the important names, addresses, emails and phone numbers (you do have one, yes?); templates for the often used documents that are particular to your Small Business or tradecraft; your QuickBooks company file(s), financial spreadsheets, bank account information; access information for the essential online accounts - URLs, login IDs and passwords. Digital scans of physical items and documents.

Archive data is the information you may no longer actively use or consult, but still need to have readily available. Tax and other financial information. Old emails, completed To-do list and calendar information. Old contract agreements. Former employee data.

None of this information (except the QuickBooks files, of course) are specific to any program. Or any particular computer platform - Windows, Mac or Linux - for that matter. ALL of this and more make up the vital, mission-critical data most Small Business don't even realize they depend upon. Until it's damaged, or it disappears.

In the next post, we'll discuss how to protect your Small Business from exposure to such risks by learning how to identify the data in each category, and adopt simple methods to protect against loss or damage.

See you soon.

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What is a Backup?

I have several Small Business clients who "back up" their data by attaching large USB hard drives to their computers, and copying key files and folders to them. While this is an excellent way to archive or synchronize data, they are surprised when I tell them this is not really a data backup. Of course, they then ask me to explain the difference?

• Archiving - is when you make a complete copy of a folder and all its contents, usually to a tape, CD or DVD, and then store it for reference or future retrieval.
• Synchronizing - is when you have two folders, usually on different machines, and you take steps to ensure that every file and subfolder which is on one machine is exactly duplicated on the other.
• Backup - is when you store files and folders for protection against accidental deletion or alteration. In backups, you usually save multiple versions of the same files and or folders, allowing you to "roll back" to the way the files or folders were at a particular date or time.

Archiving and synchronizing save copies of files and folders.

• Archiving saves many copies of the same files and folders 
• Synchronizing saves only the most recent copy of every file and folder.

Backups save versions of files and folders. Think of backups as the perfect combination of archiving and synchronizing.

• Like synchronizing, you always have the latest version of the files and folders you backup. 
• Like archiving, you have every version of every changed file and folder in your backup list.

• Unlike synchronizing, you have every version of each file and folder, not just the most recent. 
• Unlike archiving, you have only the versions of files that have changed since your last backup, not multiple copies of identical files.

In the "copy to large external drive" scenario above, archiving takes up too much space, since full copies of the entire target folder is required. Synchronizing lacks the ability to access previous versions of the target files -- if a file is infected with a virus, then synchronized, you now have two versions of a bad file, and no good file to recover with.
A backup would allow you to select an uninfected version and copy it over the infected file. This is why we consider proper backups to be a key part of data protection, along with a good antivirus and firewall  program .

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Back that @$# up!

It's the single biggest technology mistake Small Businesses make.

They use email. They surf the web. Computers are cheaper than ever, so everyone in the office has a pretty decent one. And more (though still not *most*) Small Business computers have an anti-virus program running, and some sort of firewall, on the computer itself, or at the Internet connection guarding the entire office.

So while a greater number of machines are protected against intrusion or infection, few are protected against failure. Hard drive crash. Power surge. Even accidental deletion of irreplaceable data.

Image via Wikipedia
Given the past few years, it's easy to get caught up in, well... fear - especially when credit card companies and government agencies are routinely compromised.

But let's be practical: your Small Business is in much greater danger of a critical computer dying because of mechanical failure or human error, than it is of being damaged irreparably by a malicious program.

Your data IS your business: it's the reason your Small Business even has any computers, unless you make them or repair them. Creating, storing, sharing, and manipulating information - "data", in geekspeak - is what computers do for all businesses, regardless of their size or trade.

We're all doing a better job protecting our data *from* - identity thieves, viruses and worms, prying eyes. But how well are we simply protecting our data?

Anybody out there that has ever had the hard drive of an essential computer die understands completely the importance of data protection. And even those of us who haven't actually experienced this can easily imagine the disaster this could be. Yet, time and again, the important information upon which Small Businesses depend is left to chance, luck and the hope that nothing goes wrong.

It's a shame, but the number one way I meet new Small Business clients is potential data loss situations. The smaller the business, the more likely they have no backup at all.

Fortunately, most of these cases have been "near misses", but I dread the scenario when I have to tell a Small Business owner there is nothing I can do, because the disk is dead beyond restoring, and they have NO BACKUP to retrieve data from.

So what's the problem. More usefully, what's the *solution*? In my experience, the problem is two-fold: understanding what to backup, and finding a way to backup data that isn't so complicated that you eventually stop doing it.

These factors aren't that tough to resolve, given the proper experience and insight. Both of which I will share with you in the next few posts which, when finished, should help you actually back your stuff up.

And avoid that fatal, OM%G disaster...

peace

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