Backup Anytime

When disk to disk and specifically remote disk to disk became technically and financially viable for small business we all knew it was only a matter of time before online backup become the smart administrators data backup system of choice. This took place quickly. We have now arrived at a situation in which just about all corporates and a large number of medium sized companies are using online backup. Some use their own remote infrastructure, most outsource. The important point is that they are using online backup.

The same can’t be said for small business. As it happens, most of our clients are small business users. This however is the case because of the large numbers of small business in operation. The case in point is that small business owners in Ireland in 2008 are still using tape. Many of those who have moved from tape backup moved to local copy (Removable drive, DVD, USB device) rather than remote backup. This leaves them vulnerable to total outage as a consequence of local issues. In addition, the uptake of encryption at small business level is deplorably low.

These leaves small business in Ireland vulnerable to the increase in cyber crime which is anticipated as a consequence of the global credit crunch. Those small business entities who employ technology correctly will have very significant competitive advantages on a number of fronts in the coming years. 

Are you hanging on to your data by a thin strip of tape? Do you depend on fragile media? Are you using a handy USB kids toy device to carry critical data? If you answered yes to any of these questions, call us now. Not after you have browsed the web some more, now.

Backupanytime. Beyond simple backup.

AVANAS from AVA data systems.

I was approached some months back by AVA data systems. They are the people behind AVANAS. Their business model is focused on providing enterprise class unified network storage solutions. Their product AVANAS can turn any Server (Indeed P.C.) in to a Network area storage device. I spoke with them on the phone and read through documentation on their website. They then sent me an evaluation kit. The kit comprises of simple instructions and a USB dongle.

In essence, all you have to do is insert the USB dongle in to a P.C. and it becomes a NAS and not just and NAS but a NAS with SAN capability!

The dongle contains an operating system so your PC doesn’t even need windows. It will boot off the USB device and you will be presented with an intuitive and feature rich management and monitoring console. The PC will be visible on the Network. Impressed? There’s more.

AVANAS can turn the host computer in to a RAID device regardless of controller card type or even in the absence of any controller cards. Any hard drive available on the system (including bog standard IDE drives) can be configured in various RAID settings. This gives rise to additional redundancy, cost savings, new usage possibilities for legacy hardware and a global RAID infrastructure for all systems regardless of their brand or even generation. More importantly, it works.

I tested it right out of the box in a number of different hardware environments. You don’t actually have to configure anything. AVANAS discovers everything and makes all devices available in an interface which is not daunting. All you have to do is decide what type of RAID configuration you want and AVANAS will take care of it.

A number of things about AVANAS impress me.

1. It can turn and P.C. in to a NAS device.

2. It can turn and P.C. in to a RAID device without bespoke RAID hardware.

3. It can do 1 and 2 above quickly. 

4. It does all of this effectively and without complication only requiring input where there is a choice which  is opinion based.

5. It has it’s own light operating system which can be relied upon for a specific task list so you are not depending on Windows or any other heavy operating system which may fall over because of a bug in a feature you do not require.

6. Given that it has its own operating system it is not likely to suffer from virus issues any time soon.

7. It does exactly what it says on the box. No fuss, no pain, no unpleasant surprises. AVANAS doesn’t have any of the negative characteristics often associated with products which involve the interaction of hardware and software to result in a singular system.

The secret here is in the fact that the OS is purpose specific and the software which controls RAID has been written to leave as little dependency on hardware as possible. This gives rise to the wide compatibility list and uniformity of installation.

Am I impressed. Absolutely. 

My testing was on a range of systems, mainly workstations. AVA data systems support would obviously recommend the use of modern server hardware. I can vouch for the fact that AVANAS works on a very wide range of system types and can function impressively on new and relatively old systems of workstation or Server type without difficulty.

The most impressive test I ran was on a new Dell server. The power edge T300 has four  1Terrabyte hard drives. Getting these to run in a RAID configuration in Windows required that the configuration be run during the Windows install and not later. Given that configuring RAID after the fact can not be done with this system, and post install decision to utilise the RAID hardware required a reload of windows, not over itself but a wipe and reload.

AVANAS had no such difficulty. I plugged in the boot USB device and booted. That was it. I could choose any RAID configuration and see the system on a widows network. AVANAS is the killer app for NAS, SAN and RAID integration.

You can read more on the AVA data systems website

Are U.S.B. hard drives the new tape? Not in a well managed environment.

In some very small business environments however this is the case. Please be aware that we are referring here to a low data respect and awareness category. Some people, when armed with information about tape being an old unreliable technology opt to run with a more modern technology on a budget basis. Often this brings with it increased risk, reduced automation, zero encryption and an unwarranted confidence conducive to recklessness.

It is commonly albeit not universally accepted that tape backup is an antiquated, unreliable and expensive way to backup data. With the increased uptake of U.S.B. drives as a local backup medium instead of  tape, the words frying pan and fire come to mind.

So whats wrong with U.S.B. drives? Potentially quite a lot.

Most tape backup systems come with management software whereas U.S.B. hard drive usage in small business is commonly employed on a data drag and drop basis. Your external hard drive may be (and that is a maybe) somewhat more reliable than tape but if this drive is used manually, you are the weakest link in the backup chain.

Add to this to common difficulty of U.S.B. drives causing a “data flash on entry or exit” problem and you could be setting yourself up for a total data outage. The worst is yet to come. Whatever the difficulties (and that is putting it mildly) posed by losing your data, the situation gets progressively worse if someone with disingenuous intent has it. Given that external drives are portable and are generally employed for portability, your unencrypted data could end up just about anywhere.

Tape with all its weaknesses was designed for data backup and is generally used with high quality data backup management software. To replace the hardware and dispose of the software (as tape software is for tape) may be presented as an upgrade. You could convince yourself that you are doing the right thing but in reality you are going for a more modern hardware option which is designed for other purposes and only offers some short term savings coupled with immediate and ongoing data risk at an intolerable level.

If you are going to move from tape, talk to a data backup professional. Go with a data backup specific solution. A quality solution should offer automation, verification, off-site storage, compression, encryption, reporting, reliability and support. If any of these crucial components are absent or lacking you may be better of (to a degree) with tape. This is not an endorsement of tape but a damning case against ad hoc, partial or loose backup environments.

U.S.B. drives are everywhere. There is only one reason. They are a cheap way to store data. This is OK if the device is simply intended to move non-confidential data while not depending on the transit version for continuirty. There are some things you can do in life on the cheap. Employing a strong data backup system which you absolutely rely on is not one of them.

There have been a number of tacky products about for a while which allow users to backup up their phone. The most common is USB (Yuk) which involves many manual processes. (even if you then sent it to online backup)

More recently however we have had online phone backup enter the market with third party companies programming symbian. There would appear to be significant complications with this at present. It is a better method and when it matures it should be the standard way to backup phones.

Add to the above the possibilities if mobile phone companies entered the online phone market (just a matter of time) in a real sense. What could they do differently?  Well in a addition to the obvious of a central billing point, they could run continuous backup of your phone and make the data available anywhere and anytime. Nice. It’s coming soon, real soon and you want it. If you don’t want you need it.

And now off the track for some iPhone indulgence.

Let’s face it, we all want an iPhone. Not because of technology. Certainly not because of price. It is just so well designed. Many of us will wait for value. Some just can’t. I checked the Irish market (in passing) recently. O2 appear to have that market sown up so I decided not to surrender to them ’till they have taken their premium from the rich and actually decide to sell the iPhone in serious volume. After that I couldn’t help seeing iPhone info everywhere.

I noted that Vodafone have iPhone monthly plans at Euro 29.90 in Portugal and the same company Vodafone, using the same phone, iPhone have plans at Euros 59 in Italy.

There are only two possibilities here.

The first is that the two entry level packs offer the exact same deal. If this is the case, surely it is a very obvious example of price discrimination. Is it allowed?

The second is that the deals are different. If this is the case, Vodafone have forgotten that both countries are not just in the same region but in the Euro zone which is a market and more specifically a common market. On what basis can they decide the Italians need more talk time or that talk should be cheap in Portugal.

If only O2 hadn’t got the iPhone all sown up here, we would see what Vodafone think of the Irish. Maybe we are better off not knowing.

A client asked recently just how secure encryption is. The traditional way of answering this was through mathematics. The answer was based on the type of encryption the client was using and the level of encryption. As more and more encryption options became available, the choice of encryption software used would also be decided based on the company providing the encryption with regard to to the size of the company, their level of speciality ranging from market leading programmers down to resellers and also how much integration the supplier did versus what the client was expected to do. Much of this has not changed but some areas have changed crucially. This post is based on an article in wired.com by Kim Zetter in Feb 2008. The link to the main article is here http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/researchers-dis.html

Kim reported that Princeton University researchers discovered and highlighted a serious problem which can allow an intruder with physical access to a system to effectively bypass encryption.

The attack requires only a few minutes and allows access through usage of information (the encryption key) from the computer’s RAM.

This method of bypassing encryption does not just apply to lesser known firms or old algorithms. The researchers were able to breach Microsoft’s BitLocker and Apple’s FileVault.

Respondents to varios blogs on which the issue was discussed invariably questioned if something along the lines of a subroutine within the code to clear the code from RAM would resolve the issue.

It would appear (based on private programmers comment only as no company name has confirmed on our monitored blogs) that partial RAM clear could assist in circumstances in which a ayatem was turned off when accessed but in the case of a stolen laptop which was on when stolen their is little protection within most encrption products.

It is important to point out that this issue relates to circumstances in which the perpetrator has physical access to the system as it is a physical procedure and the methods used by the researchers can not (as of yet) be completed remotely.

We are therefore entering an era in which USB encryption devices are expected to become the norm for laptops. Please do not confude these with USB pen drives for data storage which have shown themselves to be very dangerous with regard to data loss. Many responsible companies and departments have banned pen drives completely.

Anyway, the new usb dongles will not store user data. They will simply allow a user to type in a password so if it is not connected, even a user with a password (gained through permission or corruption) can not see data.