Free Servosity Online Backup Trial! Click Here...

If you are from the Greenville / Upstate South Carolina area and are into IT, you likely know Damien Stevens, or at least the name of his company, Servosity.

Today, Servosity announced that in addition to their quality online / cloud backup solution, they will have Servosity DR Server and DR Desktop available! DR Server and DR Desktop are Disaster Recovery solutions that allow you to perform a Bare Metal Recovery to dissimilar physical hardware, recover VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines, and more.

Features:

• Bare Metal Recovery to Dissimilar hardware, VMWare, Hyper-V, and VirtualBox
• Local, Network, and Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery
• Purpose built for MSPs and IT Resellers
• No Hardware Required
• Geographically Redundant SAS-70 Type II Cloud
• Recover a server, desktop, or laptop in just minutes
• Disaster Recovery with snapshots to the Network and Cloud every 15 minutes

Offsite, online, cloud backup for your business

Homeland Secure IT encourages the use of backup solutions to complete your disaster readiness plan. One of our recommendations is to implement remote, cloud based backup. Even if you have existing onsite backup, it gives you an extra layer of protection.

We partner with some of the biggest and most trusted names in offsite, cloud based backup providers such as (locally owned) Servosity, Mozy Pro and of course, Symantec.

Below, Symantec.cloud counters some of the most common objections to backing up your data offsite:

“My data won’t be secure”

• With Symantec Backup Exec.cloud, your data is secured during transit using 128 bit SSL encryption and stored using 256 bit AES encryption when at rest in Symantec’s highly secure, enterprise-class facilities.

“Online Backup will drain my bandwidth”

• After your initial backup, Symantec Backup Exec.cloud uses block level, incremental backup and performs backup of file changes only.
• Symantec Backup Exec.cloud uses bandwidth throttling to minimize impacts to your business productivity.

“It will be too difficult to manage”

• Automate backups to run on a schedule, or to backup when file modifications occur.
• Let us manage your backups for you!
• It’s easy to administer yourself – hassle free set up in just three steps.

“Backup is too expensive”

• BE.cloud offers usage-based pricing with no per-user licensing fees
• Subscription fee includes support, maintenance, and enhancements.
• With this solution there is no need to pay for resources to manage and maintain the backup system or for off-site tape storage.

“We don’t really need backup, we use removable drives and discs”

• What happens if the drive/disc is damaged, fails, is lost or stolen?
• How often are you performing backup? – Using removable drives and discs is a manual process that requires time – your time – to manage them. What could you be doing if this process was automated? Would your backup happen more regularly than it does now?
• Are there PCs or laptops that aren’t protected by using this method?
• What would happen to your productivity if one of these machines suffered a disaster/hardware failure? Would your workers lose data they need to do their jobs effectively? Would you lose any customer records, business or financial information?

“We want to manage our backup onsite”

• On-premise backup solutions can be expensive and require someone (perhaps you) to maintain them.
• On-premise backup solutions place the burden of security, storage and tape/disc vaulting on you. They also expose you to the risk of losing equipment and data in the event of a local natural disaster. - Use online backup with your existing on-premise solution to address off-site protection!
• Online backup replaces large upfront investments with predictable subscription based pricing. Managed virtually onsite using a web browser, you can not only manage and monitor the backup of machines at your location, but also at remote offices and on the machines of your mobile workers.

If you would like to know more about backing up to the cloud, or would like to discuss your backup / disaster recovery plan, please call 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com today.  We provide complete service and sales of physical, onsite backup systems, from tape to disk in addition to cloud solutions.

Those of us who have been through a hard drive failure know what real pain is! As a computer technician, it is no less devastating for us, all the same things have to take place after a failure, the routine is something like this:

• Determine the drive is indeed dead, have last rites, it was a good drive.
• Replace the drive in the computer.
• Format and load our operating system. (We do have the install disks, right?)
• Configure all the networking, ownership, accounts, etc. (What? No net access? Of course not, you don’t have the right driver)
• Load drivers for network interface,  audio, video and other hardware. (They are long out of date if you are using the original install media)
• Load all the updates, patches and driver updates. Windows XP systems may require 100 updates or more!
• Load your applications… Of course you know where the disks and license keys are.
• Find some applications online because they were downloaded. Guess what? Your key no longer works with the current version, your version is no longer available for download…
• Restore your files from the last backup you made. YOU DID MAKE A BACKUP, RIGHT?
• Spend the next week realizing you missed various things and fix those as you go.

Even for a seasoned techy type person, the time spent could literally be hours. New curse words will be invented. You may miss an important event like your son’s wedding, because this is far too important to put off.

There are many things that can shorten the time it takes to return your machine from a brick to a working system. You can ensure you have all your install media for the operating system and applications in one place, and that your product keys/licenses are tucked away safe and secure. Any hardware driver disks should be kept, and without question, you should always backup your system!

What if I told you that all of that can be avoided, and in the event of a hard drive crash or even a complete computer failure, that you could replace the drive, or failed system with another identical system, then have it running as if it never happened in about 20 minutes?

Through the magic of a “Bare-Metal Restore”, that is entirely possible! It is as if you went back in time, to happier days when the system was working correctly!

Many products are on the market that can accomplish this, but if you are using our Servosity Online On-Demand backup solution, you already have all the software you need!  You will require an extra hard drive to make the image to, a few minutes to configure it, and then let it run!

Watch it in action here as Damien Stevens, CEO of Servosity talks with Jon Evans, and George Law performs an actual restore:

We are so sold on Servosity that we use it for our own servers, recommend it to our clients and have partnered with them to offer it to you!

Convinced this may be right for you? Call us at 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com. Want a free trial? Sure you do! Click this link:

FREE Servosity Online Backup Trial! Click Here...

A computer security post on TGDaily.com entitled, “BlackHole RAT Trojan targets Mac OS X” discusses Mac’s very own variant of a Microsoft Windows Remote Access Tool (RAT) called darkComet.

The Mac version is known as “BlackHole RAT” and it is not quite ready for prime time, though it seems to offer a great stepping stone to be used to target the Mac OSX platform. While most Mac owners still believe they are impervious to exploits, blog articles and service requests tend to prove otherwise. The Mac has mainly been an unattractive target to the authors of malware because the rewards for their efforts would be low.

This is basically “security through obscurity” which certainly can work, but Mac sales have been increasing slowly, making the operating system a little more visible on the black hat radar.

Those of you reading this blog probably feel I am beating a dead horse, but now is the time for you Mac owners to get anti-virus on your systems. It actually may be too late, since the Mac is such a great multitasking system, you may be infected, and not even know it. Another thing to seriously consider is backup!

We recommend Trend Micro for your Mac, and offer it for sale. We can also help with Greenville / Upstate SC Mac virus removal and cleanup, as well as Servosity Online Backup for your Mac. Please call 864.990.4748 for more information, or email info@homelandsecureit.com

Kablooieeee

A common question that computer sales, repair, service and support people hear is, “How long will this computer last me?”

The most common answer is, “It depends…”

Just what does it depend on? The quality of the product is of the highest importance, but even a very reliable device can have a shortened life if not maintained properly and it is very dependent upon the environment it is subjected to.

For instance, a typical business desktop workstation could have a lifespan of 3-5 years in a “typical” office environment. But take the temperature of the room it is in up a few degrees, or expose that same computer to dirt in the air, which coats internal parts and affects how well heat is dispersed and you could have a machine that lives half as long. Power issues are another killer of desktop computers. Failure to use a surge suppressor or UPS could allow harmful voltage spikes and sags to damage components.

This is exactly why you hear “It depends” so frequently. No two locations are the same, and even offices in the same building are different.

Let’s look at what MTBF means exactly.  MTBF is the common abbreviation for “Mean Time Between Failures” and is indicative of how reliable a product is. The higher the MTBF, the more reliable the device is.

MTBF is measured in hours, such as the hard drive from a two year old Apple Mac Book that is on my desk… Its MTBF is rated at 300,000 hours, which should be, what? 34 years? WOW! That’s amazing! In reality that MTBF is a theoretical number, meaning that if all goes well, the drive should live a long happy life. Well all did not go well, the drive is dead in a tiny fraction of the MTBF.

One thing to keep in mind is that business class computers almost always contain components which have a higher MTBF than their consumer counterparts. Business class computers also have 3 year warranties available, and sometimes longer, because the manufacturer understands that they used the best parts that were available for the money. Give a business class computer consideration if you are looking to replace an important workstation or notebook in the future.

One thing I can say is, regardless, be sure to backup your systems! Use either a physical backup like a USB drive, flash drive, or even better, something like our Servosity Online Backup Solution (free trial!) to protect your data. Going by MTBF is like saying that you will live 78 years because everyone in your family did. Don’t count on it.

So how long will that computer last you? It depends….

If you need assistance in selecting a new computer or repair of an existing one for your Greenville or Upstate business, please call upon us as we offer a wide selection of Seneca Data / Nexlink, HP, Dell, Toshiba, Samsung, Acer, Lenova and more! 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com

Yes, I keep beating this horse, but not a week goes by that we are not reminded how important backups are for businesses and individuals!

Happy New Year 2011

This week, a gentleman sent us his Lexar 16 GB memory stick, which had been purchased in order to backup his data to it. Normally I would be cheering for this, but, apparently this memory stick actually became his main storage location and there was no backup of the data on his hard drive or other media.

As you have probably guessed, this story does not have a happy ending. The memory stick has malfunctioned and no data can be read off of it. It is a hardware issue, and the memory stick is damaged and overheating.

So, what could this gentleman have done to protect himself? He could have had more than one copy of his data. Storing it on one memory stick is the equivalent to putting all your eggs in one basket. (Or all your investments in one company).

A simple solution would have been to have kept the data on his computer, then copied it regularly to the flash drive, or multiple flash drives, external USB hard drives, or even DVD media.

A more elegant solution would be to use an online backup service like our Servosity offering. Servosity is a fully automated application that runs during a particular time window to upload files from your desktop or notebook computer, and/or your company server. The storage is in-the-cloud (located on remote servers), completely encrypted, so you have no need to worry about the security of the data.

You get a daily email that explains that your data was indeed backed up and you don’t have to give it another thought. In the event you delete a file, or lose a folder, or something becomes corrupted on your end, you can log into a web based interface and download the data, or you can even restore an entire drive.

Servosity Online Backup is the primary cloud computing backup solution that we use here and highly recommend to all of our customers. It works on Microsoft Windows desktop & notebook operating systems, Apple Mac OS X desktops and laptops, Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Exchange Mail Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Linux/Unix/*nix, Solaris and more!

With offerings like Servosity there is really no excuse for not backing up, so we are offering a free 30 day trial to give you a chance to check it out!

If you would like more information about Servosity or physical backup solutions like LTO & DAT tape, RDX (Removable Disk Storage), tape autoloaders, NAS or SAN solutions, Symantec Backup Exec, or continuous backup systems, please call us at 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com. We offer complete sales, service & consultation in Greenville and Upstate SC!

Click here to check out our free Servosity Online Backup trial!

Today you can hardly have a conversation with IT professionals without the buzz words, “cloud computing”, “in the cloud”, “cloud solutions”, etc popping up.

What do these terms mean? To over-simplify the definition, it means that something is not stored at your location. It is stored “in the cloud”, or on a remote server, and accessed via the internet. The “it” could be data, as in your databases, email, files, or it could be programs / applications, such as web based suites of software like Microsoft Office suite, including Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word or custom applications.

All this talk about moving to “the cloud”, a term which is generically used for the internet, has people thinking about how it can be used for their business. Let’s take our own small business and use it as an example.

Currently, we use a large server which has Microsoft Server 2008 loaded on it and functions as our domain controller, DNS, DHCP, and other standard server tasks… It also serves as our file server, and it hosts Microsoft Exchange for our in-house email. Other tasks this one piece of hardware is responsible for are: TFTPd for management of our VoIP phone system’s configuration files, backup of data (Using multiple backup systems such as Servosity Online Backup Solution, an “in the cloud” product, and MozyPro) and Trend Micro Worry Free Business Security Advanced for anti-virus and anti-spam.

We have a second server which hosts additional files, Blackberry Enterprise Server (not currently in use due to the switch to Android phones), and is a test bed for us. Then we have two other servers, a Voice over IP server based on Linux OS which is in control of our phone system & voice mail, and a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) for storage of video from our CCTV cameras.

In order to reduce some overhead, we could potentially maintain a smaller main server with only Windows 2008 R2 running on it as a domain controller, then utilize Microsoft Aurora, or even Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), allowing mail storage and transport to take place outside our building.

We could then switch from Trend Micro Worry Free Business Security Advanced to the Trend Hosted solution, relieving our server from those duties.

Since we are already using a remote backup solution, we would not have to worry about that, and our backup requirements would actually drop since we would no longer need to backup the Microsoft Exchange Store (Microsoft would handle that for us with the BPOS solution).

As you can see, eliminating the main server entirely from the equation here is not going to be possible, however a considerable amount of storage, backup, and resources could be moved elsewhere.

One thing to take into consideration before moving to these hosted solutions is, what if our internet is down? That is a good question which still has many people concerned about these technologies. In the case of online file storage, if you do not have cached storage at your location, you simply have no access to it. In the case of mail, if you are caching the information locally, you CAN see your old/existing email, but you cannot send or receive new mail until the connection is reestablished. It is important to note that cloud based email will still RECEIVE email when your business is without an internet connection and you will get it as soon as the connection is reestablished, something that doesn’t happen now if you use an onsite Exchange Server, unless you are using a mail hold & forward (spool) system at your ISP or other provider.

Should you desire to discuss your needs and how products like Microsoft Aurora, BPOS, Google Apps, Servosity and other cloud services can fit into your infrastructure, please call us at 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com for a free consultation!  We are partners with Microsoft, Google, Servosity, MozyPro and other cloud providers. We also offer a full line of computer, server & network service, support, sales and consultation here in Greenville & Upstate SC!

Microsoft is offering a free 30 day trial of their Business Productivity Online Suite if you would like to see it in action.

One lightning strike can ruin your whole day...

Last night was scary for some people here in the Upstate of SC. Easley was hit hard in the business area of Main Street and Pendleton Street and residences along 135 by the passing storms.

As I watched the news and saw the video footage of damage, I felt horrible for the business and home owners affected. We turned on the scanner radio and listened as emergency crews went street by street, clearing each house they came to. We heard that business owners would not be allowed back into their business until 8 AM today, and an entire condo was evacuated and they were not allowed in until after power was restored.

Those who did not suffer structural damage from the wind, or trees falling on their building and the water that poured in, may have suffered in other ways. Servers and workstations that were not on an UPS (Un-Interruptable Power Supply) went down when the power went out, losing any data that was not saved, and potentially corrupting hard drives or data that was being written at the time.

Then there is the damage to electronics, especially computers & servers, when the power attempts to come on, spikes, surges, brownouts. These power events have the potential for destroying sensitive components.

A simple and relatively inexpensive device such as an APC or Eaton UPS could help prevent costly damage, lost productivity and save your data by automatically shutting down the computer after a power failure, saving data properly, and during the continual power up/power down cycles, provide the filtering necessary to protect your systems. Your insurance company may offer discounts for coverage of equipment covered by UPS due to the reduced chance of costly computer server repair or service, or even replacement.

Another nice feature of an UPS would be to supply power to internet routers / switches, CCTV system and VoIP systems to allow you to view your security cameras to assess possible damage before you can even enter your building (If the internet connection is not severed), and your phone systems can continue to function if you have a large enough UPS so that Voice Mail and FAX can still come in.  An UPS can serve to power your systems until your generator comes online if you have one, so your Microsoft Exchange system may never go offline assuming your building is not one of the ones affected by structural damage.

The obvious next layer of protection is a backup solution, such as an onsite backup, whether it is an LTO, DLT or other tape drive, external hard drives, NAS / SAN etc, which could help if the need to restore data comes up… Taking that idea one step further would offer an offsite, or online backup solution, placing your data “in the cloud” safely away from your geographic location, so if a fire, tornado, flood or even a theft occurs, your data is located elsewhere and can be downloaded to a new computer or server.

If you would like to discuss how power protection and backup solutions can safeguard your systems or if you require assistance with a business continuity plan, please email info@homelandsecureit.com or call 864.990.4748. We are partners with APC, Eaton, Symantec, Quantum and Servosity.  We also offer a FREE trial of the Servosity Online Backup Solution….

Free Servosity Online Backup Trial

Say "no" to stacks of CDs

If you are using CDs,  DVDs, flash drives, external hard drives, or other physical media to backup your notebook computer, you are doing 100% more to protect your data than the majority of all PC owners!

However, you are also spending time connecting devices or inserting backup media and likely are manually starting the backup, leaving lots of room for missed backups. If you are using an external USB hard drive, you may be using the included software to automatically backup to that media when you have it plugged in, which could make for gaps of days, weeks, months, or who knows, even longer between backups.

Those of you who want to insure your data is backed up, automatically, without interaction from you at all, should consider an online or remote backup solution. These are ideal for a mobile computer, whether it is an Apple Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows or even a Linux based system! All you do is establish an account, install the software, configure the software for a time frame for running and you are done. “Set it and forget it” as they say.

When you have your computer turned on and connected to the internet, the data is uploaded to the remote server automatically and you get an email that lets you know that it completed correctly or that a backup was missed. You can see the backup details, you can set the backup to be “continuous” where your files are synced as they change, etc.

Your data is stored remotely on encrypted and secure servers. You can access a single file or restore an entire folder via the application or a handy web interface!

Here at Homeland Secure IT, we use, recommend and offer a free trial of Servosity Online Backup. Servosity is a locally owned and operated business here in Greenville, SC whom we are proud to partner with to bring our clients a rock solid, dependable and affordable backup solution. Servosity works with desktops, laptops, server (including Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and more!) and as mentioned previously, multiple operating systems from Windows to Apple Mac, to Linux, etc.

Free Servosity Online Backup Trial! Click Here...

If you would like more information about how Servosity Online Backup can help you or your business, or you would like a FREE TRIAL of the service, please email info@homelandsecureit.com or call 864.990.4748. We offer a full range of backup solutions, both physical onsite and remote.  Don’t go another day without KNOWING your data is protected!

You could have a happy ending to your story, where your laptop is stolen (or lost) and the person has mercy on your soul and sends your data back to you (See THIS STORY).

However, if you are like me just a few years ago, you will lose your notebook and your data along with it.

Avoid this by using an online backup solution like Servosity… It is totally automated, and we will provide you with a 30 day trial. Whether it is for your notebook with only a few gigs, or your servers with 100 gigs or more, Servosity will work great for you. It can backup MS Exchange, MS SQL, etc. Mac OSX, Linux, etc are also supported!

For more information about Servosity online backup or other backup solutions such as RDX, Tape Backup, Symantec Backup Exec, etc, please email info@homelandsecureit.com or call 864.990.4748.