If your company is a midsize enterprise, it is certain that you have an increasing amount of data stored electronically. Technologies such as Microsoft Exchange, accounting and financial software, and Microsoft SQL Server are at the core of today's midsize company.
Additionally, broad adoption of laptops and notebooks means today's employees often take their work and the company's data with them. As this technology and the data that it generates and stores are so critical to a company's ability to conduct business, it is vital to protect this data from loss or damage.
Despite the crucial importance of data protection, many companies are failing to adequately back up and encrypt their data. Inefficient or outdated backup methods combined with limited IT resources means that your company's data may not be as safe as you assume it is.
With the numerous ways that data can be lost-from human error, hardware failure, viruses, theft (tapes or laptops), software corruption, or natural disasters-it is inevitable that your company will at some point need to recover data. Whether or not this can be done quickly and cost-effectively, without a negative impact on your company's ability to conduct business, depends on the soundness of your backup strategy.
Data loss can be catastrophic for a business with an incomplete or inadequate backup solution. Furthermore, increasing government regulations mean that some businesses have a legal obligation to ensure that data is protected and recoverable. Clearly, for the midsize company data backup and recovery is not optional, and must be done well to maximize business continuity.
Midsize businesses face the unique problem of providing the same level of service as their larger competitors, but with smaller IT staffs. As a result, the IT staff must be able to deploy reliable and efficient solutions and be confident they are going to work rather than have to watch the software. Because backup is such a critical component of a company's IT infrastructure, finding the right solution is extremely important.
Your customers and vendors are counting on you. By implementing a reliable and affordable backup strategy that protects data where it exists -on servers, in databases, or on desktops and laptops, you can avoid the headaches, high costs, and embarrassments associated with data loss and ensure that your small business remains viable even in the event of a major data disaster.
Yosemite understands that small businesses like yours don't have the resources to implement and manage a costly and complex backup solution. That is why we offer 2 products: Yosemite Backup for traditional data protection of servers, the "core" of your business, and Yosemite FileKeeper Corporate for continuous data protection of laptops and desktops running at the "edge" of your business. Our simple licensing scheme means that you can avoid the confusing options and price premiums associated with other backup software. With over 10 years of experience in enabling simple and cost-effective backup and recovery, Yosemite offers you a reliable, affordable, and worry-free way to safeguard all of your valuable data and ensure the continuity of your business.
Elements for a Backup solution
Midsize companies should consider the following when choosing, replacing, or updating data protection and recovery solutions:
- Automation. To ensure that your data is protected, it must be backed up regularly. For applications running on servers at the "core" of a business, an automated solution that offers calendar-based scheduling makes this easy and removes the often error-prone and inconsistent human element. For data created and managed on laptops and often exists at the "edge" of a business, scheduling is not practical because there's no guarantee the system will be powered on at the time of backup. Protection for these systems must be event-based. Once setup, such systems requires no human intervention to operate, so you know your data will be protected even if someone calls in sick or leaves early. The system should also automatically alert the administrator in the event of an error during any data protection process.
- Effective notebook and desktop protection. The best protection for this class of system will be transparent in operation and intuitive for typical users and allow full function in non-controlled environments outside the office and when connected or disconnected. The process should employ data retention and transfer intelligence to minimize network impact. Users should have the ability to not only restore a deleted or corrupted file, but also the ability to recover previous versions of files.
- Encryption. Data vulnerability does not stop after it's backed up. All too often, tapes containing critical data are lost or stolen while in transit or storage. Encrypting data as it's written to this media is the best protection from unauthorized access.
- Scalability. Your business is growing and so is your network and your data. You need a system that can grow with those needs. Any system you deploy today must be able to seamlessly increase its capacity, device support and performance to meet the data protection demands of your growing business in the future.
- Process control. Incremental backups (only backing up files that have changed since the previous backup) speeds the backup process and reduces the amount of storage needed. A comprehensive system should allow the scheduling of protection jobs based on the frequency of update for each file of group of files. Data that changes more often or is very important should be protected more often. The system should also provide automatic rotation schemes for removable media.
- Performance. Because backups can interfere with the workday, lack scalability, or have difficulty coping with device failure, choose software that enables true multiplexing, can scale as needs grow, and can automatically direct backup data streams to available devices.
- System Restore. Your data protection system should have an automated process for returning not only your data, but also your full system to operational status. This means that it will restore your operating system and installed applications in a one step process.
- Ability to go back in time. This will allow you to return your system to precisely how it was as of the time of last backup.
- File recovery. Recovered files should be easy to find. Backup software should track where files are backed up, be easily searchable, and allow rapid recovery (including version control) through point-and-click.
- Licensing. Licensing that uses tiers or other complex models makes software complicated and more costly to purchase. Choose software that employs a simplified licensing model to reduce cost and complexity.
- Flexible disk-to-disk backup. Disk-to-disk backup provides advantages over tape backup, such as easing media management and speeding recovery, but can be too cumbersome or expensive for a small business. The ideal solution is backup software that enables flexible disk backup without requiring expensive proprietary Storage Area Network (SAN) or Network Attached Storage (NAS) hardware. A complete solution must also support removable media devices, such as tape, for offsite storage.
- Support for your platform. Although Microsoft Windows is the predominant platform used by small businesses, some rely entirely on Novell NetWare and Linux. Most backup software cannot cope with a non-Windows environment.
Key Features & Benefits of Yosemite Backup:
* Blue background cells denote optional components which are sold separately from Yosemite Backup Master Server
| Modular Architecture |
Provides the foundation for a flexible solution that easily grows from a single-server to a many-server environment |
| Media Encryption |
Integrated and easy to implement software encryption allows users to quickly and easily select one of three encryption levels. |
| Yosemite FileKeeper Corporate |
Optionally extend support to desktops and laptops running on the "edge" of your business using FileKeeper's efficient continuous file protection and intuitive right-click user recovery. |
| Self-Tuning Logic Automation |
Automatically calculates and dynamically adjusts the number of concurrent data streams to ensure backups complete in the prescribed backup window |
| Unlimited Backup to Disk |
Ensures optimal backup performance by providing ability to backup directly to and restore from disk regardless of data volume |
| Disk-to-Disk-to-Any (D2D2Ne) |
Quickly and easily implement data copy policies that allow you to seamlessly backup data to disk for fast backups/recoveries and then copy to tape for security and disaster protection |
| Bare Metal Disaster Recovery |
Create a bootable image for complete, quick, and easy system recovery without reinstalling the operating system or applications |
| Calendar-based scheduling |
Highly flexible scheduler makes it simple to customize automated backup to suit any need |
| Easy, wizard-driven job setup |
Quickly and easily install, configure, and manage your data protection strategy. Quick Access Tray icon enables quick access to management tasks. |
| Easy recovery |
Full tracking of backups to allow easy selection of data to be recovered, including specific versions of files; restore from VTL results in rapid recovery of data |
| Quick and simple install |
Enables you to begin protecting your data in minutes |
| Application and Database Agents |
Native data protection for popular applications such as MS Exchange Server and MS SQL Server |
| Protection for unlimited number of networked desktops |
Protect important data stored on networked PCs |
| Native support for Windows, Linux, or Netware |
Yosemite Backup Standard runs natively allowing you to use the best platform for your business |
Key Features & Benefits of Yosemite FileKeeper Corporate:
| Continuous Data Protection (CDP) |
Files are backed-up as they are created and updated. Minimizes financial impact of data loss by insuring the most recent versions of a user's data is protected. |
| Transparent Operation |
FileKeeper's Agents operate in the background and do not require interaction with the user. User data is automatically and continuously protected without impacting end-user productivity. |
| Self-Service File Recovery |
FileKeeper Corporate provides an intuitive right-click interface to allow users to restore previous versions. User initiated restores reduces the reliance on the limited IT resources and increases productivity. |
| Mobile User Support |
FileKeeper Corporate supports occasionally-connected users by storing changed files on the local disk and then copying them to the file backup locations when users reconnect to their network. This protects information stored on the most vulnerable computers in an organization's network. Users can also restore from this local cache, thereby providing full function while disconnected. |
| Point-in-Time Recovery |
FileKeeper Corporate can "rollback" files to their state at a specified date and time enabling users to quickly recover from data corruption caused by virus attacks and hardware failure. |
| File Delta Technology |
FileKeeper Corporate can be configured to only back up the changes that occur to a file since the previous backup. This minimizes the impact on an organization's network bandwidth and storage resources. |
| Compatible with Existing Backup Strategy |
FileKeeper Corporate backup locations may be backed up to tape using an Yosemite backup or other application. FileKeeper Corporate extends your investment in server/back-office backup technology to your notebook and desktop PCs. |
| Centralized Management |
FileKeeper Corporate enables a single administrator to centrally manage the configuration and policies of all FileKeeper Corporate users, thereby lowering the total cost of owning and administrating FileKeeper Corporate. |
| Automated Deployments |
FileKeeper Corporate supports silent installation packages and it can leverage existing software deployment infrastructures, providing a very low cost of deploying FileKeeper Corporate to multiple users across the organization. |
| Data Policies |
FileKeeper Corporate enables organizations to actively enforce policies for data retention across the entire company. Organizations can ensure that high value information is managed according to their business rules. |