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Hammer time!
Posted: February 25, 2010 (21:16) under Hardware, Intellectual Property, Security

Hammer Time!

Ah, there’s nothing like a good metaphor! Without metaphors, we’d be as lost as…well, we’d be just plain lost, wouldn’t we? We couldn’t be fancy-lost if we tried, not without metaphors. And here’s a killer metaphor:

Your data is like the precious contents of an exotic shark tank in Dubai (no, it really is, bear with me here): without its proper support and maintenance, it can leak away so slowly you don’t even notice until it’s too late, to the point where it reaches a critical failure and comes crashing to the ground all at once in a massive and irreparable cascade that will cost WELL over Goliath’s arm and leg to fix. For example:

A friend of mine was once responsible for the computer systems of the government a small, here-nameless Asian country. He insisted his onsite team install duplicate systems in a separate physical location to ensure that in case of emergency they could continue to function, and they did so and reported it back to him. Then there was an earthquake.

And the mainframe computer housing the alpha of the government’s systems fell through the floor onto the mainframe directly below it, which was the one housing the emergency backup systems.

Offsite. It’s a very important word when it comes to backups. And no, the room immediately below is not off enough.

Your backups should not only be in a physically different location, they should if at all possible be on a completely independent system, so that no matter what virus, worm, trojan or act of Gob may occur, you can be up and running with minimal if any downtime.  Now, if you’re a Dubaious shark keeper, this is somewhat of a challenging proposition. If, however, you’re a webmaster, writer, photographer, filmmaker, or other creator or packager of information in any form, it’s not so hard at all. In fact, we’re here to make it easy.

Trust your precious data to a specialist who’ll make sure it’s there when you need it and not out there duplicating your content, diluting your audience, and weakening your brand when you don’t.