Myths about the Cloud; things that may be implied but are NOT true:
- Information Secure
- Data Redundancy
- Stored in a location outside your local area
- Monitored

Events of note:
- Amazon EC3 Failure
- DropBox Security Breach
- Gmail Mailbox Loss
- Carbonite Lost Data
- My Backup Loss

What is the answers to these issues with who you are talking to or considering?

That got me thinking about what I do.  I have partners that I do work with that do data recovery either as part of their core service offerings or do that for their customers.  Since I do their backup off-site and optionally on-site that saying would apply to what I do.

The caveat is if “they” were a customer of mine before the data loss.
#1 If they were than no question, I recover their data.
#2 If not, then the question is weather their hardware was damaged and to what extent.

So the answer:
#1 NO COST
#2 Service cost or REALLY big costs for hardware recovery.

Want to know who is both happier and up and running the quickest?

Call Me to find out.

John
214-550-0550

The good news is that Google reported that users’ e-mails, contacts, folders and settings have not been lost. They are retrievable and should be back in users’ accounts once the problem is resolved.  Keep an eye on the dashboard.

“Imagine the sinking feeling of logging in to your Gmail account and finding it empty,” wrote Ben Treynor, a Google vice president engineering and Site Reliability Czar, in a blog post . “That’s what happened to 0.02% of Gmail users yesterday, and we’re very sorry. The good news is that email was never lost and we’ve restored access for many of those affected. Though it may take longer than we originally expected, we’re making good progress and things should be back to normal for everyone soon.”

The number of users affected has varied. At first, the company estimated that 0.08%, or 150,000 users had been affected. Later Monday, Google reduced that estimate to 0.02%, or 35,000.

On Monday afternoon, a Google spokesman told Computerworld that engineers had restored service to about a third of those affected.

In his blog Monday night, Treynor addressed the question of how this could happen if Google has multiple copies of users’ data in multiple data centers.

“Well, in some rare instances software bugs can affect several copies of the data,” Treynor wrote. “That’s what happened here. Some copies of mail were deleted, and we’ve been hard at work over the last 30 hours getting it back for the people affected by this issue.”

He added that engineers have also archived to tape in order to save the data.

“To protect your information from these unusual bugs, we also back it up to tape,” he said. “Since the tapes are offline, they’re protected from such software bugs. But restoring data from them also takes longer than transferring your requests to another data center , which is why it’s taken us hours to get the email back instead of milliseconds.”

Treynor said a detailed incident report will be posted to Google’s Apps Status Dashboard .

Our TAKE:

We believe that this highlights the importance of backup for businesses.  I was having lunch with a friend on Monday that told me has last company used Gmail so that they would not have to worry about backups — Oops!

Not all backup solutions are the same.  Check out our Ten Questions page for questions you should ask and get GOOD answers to from your backup person or provider.

John Neibel
Mirrored Storage, Inc.
www.mirroredstorage.com

Mirrored Storage has been offering that STANDARD for over 2 years and don’t require any special certification or product to do it.  Our clients that want this feature only need extra hard drive space on ANY computer, storage device or shared drive.  If a dedicated machine is desired for running the backup OR storage of the local backup we offer an appliance.

Here is a summary of what they are coming out with:

Mozy announced a strategic partnership with Cisco and Iomega. This marks the first collaboration where these two companies are going to include MozyPro in their respective storage offerings.

According to its maker, MozyPro solution can simplify the disaster recovery and business continuity plans of small businesses cost-effectively.

In a press release, Mozy explained that the need for simplified business disaster preparedness is continuously rising—leading small businesses to increasingly adopt safe, cost-effective backup and storage solutions. Mozy’s fully integrated backup service has a hybrid approach which combines local and online backup.

According to the company, this hybrid approach is fast gaining in popularity as this approach significantly helps in reducing the complex overhead and excessive administrative costs traditionally required by tape-based backup.

This hybrid solution is provided through the integration of MozyPro with one of several NAS vendors to simplify a company’s data protection stack. With two layers of redundant data protection, both local and online, SMBs can focus more on their business and worry less about data backup, the company explained.

MozyConnect integrated with Cisco NSS300 Series Smart Storage, as well as with Iomega StorCenter desktop and rackmount network storage devices, which are expected to give customers a fully integrated solution for backing up their critical business data locally on the device and online in Mozy’s secure datacenters.

“As we continue to protect more and more businesses with MozyPro, we have heard the growing need to offer this hybrid approach. We’re excited that Cisco and Iomega are the first two network-attached storage providers to work with us to fill this need, and we look forward to adding more vendors to our MozyConnect service in the future,” VP of product management for Mozy Russ Stockdale commented in a statement.

Mozy also announced that MozyConnect for Cisco Smart Storage is available now via Mozy direct sales and through Mozy resellers, as well as all Cisco partners.

MozyConnect for Iomega StorCenter Network Storage products is scheduled for availability in the spring of 2011.

Again, we have been doing this for 2 year AND not charging for it.

For more information please visit our website

Written by
John Neibel
President
Mirrored Storage, Inc
www.mirroredstorage.com

The reason is not hard to guess: with ever-growing quantities of photos and videos, the unlimited plan is financially unsustainable, the company said. In other words, it’s my fault.

You see, I’m a Mozy customer. I spent $82 for a two-year subscription and started inflicting my hundreds of gigabytes of photos and increasingly videos as well. I’m a photo nerd, so each 21-megapixel photo in raw format sucks up something like 20MB or 25MB, and each video is shot in 1080p so even shortish clips can occupy a half a gigabyte.

I’m somewhere in the top 0.3 percent in terms of my data use, but I’m also a leading indicator, and that’s why Mozy is altering course.

“There has been a change in consumer behavior,” said Russ Stockdale, Mozy’s vice president of product management. “What we have seen since we launched an unlimited service five years ago is there has been an explosion in digital content, specifically digital photos and video.”

In my case, with just under 600GB of data, the $3.40 per month I pay now will explode to just about $60 per month when my subscription runs its course in a few months.

That’s because Mozy will begin charging $5.99 per month for up to 50GB of data, with more costing $2 per month per 20GB after that. And, recognizing that more and more people have multiple computers to back up, it’s added a new multi-machine option costing $9.99 a month for up to 125GB and three computers. More computers or further 20GB increments add another $2 per month each.

Good-bye unlimited
Needless to say, I’m now looking at Mozy alternatives. But I don’t feel resentful–just sad at the disappearance of yet another uncapped part of the Net.

I’m grandfathered into an unlimited-data plan with T-Mobile UK, but if I leave to try to find a carrier with better service, they don’t have an unlimited plan for me, and I can’t go back to the T-Mobile plan. Likewise, my unlimited home broadband account actually has fair-use limits, as is customary in the U.K. My $25 a year at Flickr gets me unlimited photo storage, but it’s something of a holdout in an increasingly pay-as-you-go world.

And Mozy isn’t alone. Google Docs costs $1,400 a year for 400GB, for example, and Google’s Picasa Web Albums costs $100 per year for 400GB. Jungle Disk, which provides a front end to storage using Amazon’s S3 service, charges $3.15 per gigabyte per month. Carbonite, perhaps Mozy’s best-known competitor, throttles down bandwidth for big-data users. And up-and-comer Dropbox charges $20 per month for 100GB.

Here’s Mozy’s rationale for the change: the average storage per user increased more than 50 percent last year. More than half of the growth, though, was with the top 10 percent of the users, as measured by how much data that they have.

“The great majority of customers are growing at manageable levels, while the heaviest users bring up the average for the entire group,” Stockdale said.

Mozy braces itself
The company knows it’s in for some ill will.

“We do not take this on lightly…I don’t expect everybody to be happy about it. But if they take a look at what we’re doing and why, it’ll at least be understandable,” he said. Mozy is trying to make the change so it can provide sustainable high-quality backup in the long term” and not resort to fine-print shenanigans hoping few will notice.

The unlimited plans come to an end starting March 1, but last through the end of each customer’s paid subscription.

Not all of Mozy’s costs are going up. Hard drives can hold ever more data for a given price (2-terabyte drives can be had for $100 these days). But that’s not enough to deal with Mozy’s financial plight, Stockdale said.

I warned y’all last year “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is“.  Now Mozy confirms my statement/prediction:

“Mozy scraps unlimited backups”

The cost of storage is an element, but it is not even the majority of cost of providing the service,” Stockdale said. “The bandwidth, the data centers, the people who manage that–those costs are a larger part of the cost of providing this.”

Mozy, though a subsidiary of storage powerhouse EMC, uses its own software running on commodity storage systems. Later this year, though, to it’ll start moving users to EMC hardware and eventually migrate everyone, Stockdale said.

http://www.deals2buy.com/deals/jqwzkfhk49nbuta28ssrtch4t3hc4adxfaaft7wu7atyb9n7cd3q-ca-online-backup-10gb-unlimited-pcs1-year-subscript?utm_medium=rssalldeals&source=rssalldeals

It highlights what is WRONG with Bogus FREE Online Backup offerings.  With this offer you get software free, storage cheep & storage limited?  What doesn’t “compute” for you?  Summary of this offer is 44.99 Tax Software (really free if you check ANY H&R Block sites), Online Backup Software w/ unlimited storage and 10gb of backup storage.  Anyone see and issue?

I have to admit that I run up against the FREE/Unlimited issue every week.  I reply with a simple questions “If it sounds to good to be true do you believe it?”  For us folks in our 40′s we relate to the old Columbia Record & Tape offer of “12 albums and tapes for a PENNY”.  The reality was that we had to buy the next 18 records for $24 each when the retail prices were $12 each.

Internet Radio Interview

And tape used by 75%, according to report from Aberdeen Group

Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company, has found that companies that backup critical data and systems at remote locations have a faster recovery time from computer-generated business interruptions.

Aberdeen’s recent research report, Off-site Storage and Computing: Keys to Successful Disaster Recovery ($399), shows companies employ various methods and technologies for managing offsite storage for their critical data, keeping it safe from even the most severe disaster scenarios.

The report features research based on a survey of the disaster recovery practices of over 100 worldwide companies.

Aberdeen’s research found:

• Ninety-five percent (95%) of leading companies utilize off-site storage of critical data. Fifty-seven percent (57%) report replication of critical computing systems to remote locations.
• One third of highly performing organizations (33%) employ simultaneous backup to remote locations. This ensures that little, if any, data is lost with a system interruption as all data is being replicated remotely as it is created.
• Tape storage is still used by 75% of superior organizations, indicating that the medium’s usefulness still remains, particularly for cost and long term archiving reasons.

“Preventing and recovering from computer-generated business interruptions continues to be a focus in the IT industry,” says Dick Csaplar, Senior Research Analyst and author of the study. “Leading organizations report less than 1 business interruption over the last 12 months and require less than one hour of time to recover 90% of their operational functionality. This superior performance is accomplished through several technologies, but the key reason for quick recovery is that critical data and systems are remotely located.”

Source: http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/tapes/aberdeen-group-off-site-storage

Mirrored Storage Comments:

This is exactly why I entered this market.  Larger company have a significant gap, 67% don’t have backups simultaneously going to a remote location.  In the small and medium size business market the number of firm without a comprehensive solution in place.  From the beginning we offered both a local disk and remote backup for your customers.

We offer a free backup assessment with no strings attached or you can take a quiz online.  If we are not a good fit we tell you so.  Our mission is to help protect companies from the disaster of data loss.

John Neibel
President

SAN FRANCISCO, July 17, 2009, Mirrored Storage has been selected for the 2009 Best of Business Award in the Data processing and preparation category by the Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA)

The Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA) is pleased to announce that Mirrored Storage has been selected for the 2009 Best of Business Award in the Data processing and preparation category.

The SBCA 2009 Award Program recognizes the top 5% of small businesses throughout the country. Using statistical research and consumer feedback, the SBCA identifies companies that we believe have demonstrated what makes small businesses a vital part of the American economy. The selection committee chooses the award winners from nominees based off statistical research and also information taken from monthly surveys administered by the SBCA, a review of consumer rankings, and other consumer reports. Award winners are a valuable asset to their community and exemplify what makes small businesses great.

About Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA)

Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA) is a San Francisco based organization. The SBCA is a private sector entity that aims to provide tactical guidance with many day to day issues that small business owners face. In addition to our main goal of providing a central repository of small business operational advice; we use consumer feedback to identify companies that exemplify what makes small business a vital part of the American economy.

SOURCE: Small Business Commerce Association

CONTACT:
Small Business Commerce Association
Email: Press@SBCAAwards.org
URL: http://www.SBCAAwards.org

CONTACT:

Mirrored Storage, Inc.
Email: sales@mirroredstorage.com
URL: http://MirroredStorage.com