The Underscore Archives

On 16 Nov 2007, at 17:45, Oliver Humpage wrote:
>
> * Somewhere to store the disks offsite, or a small 2-hour fireproof  
> data
> safe (not a document safe, has to be for data), e.g.
> http://www.securesafe.co.uk/Katalogue-S/1/Data+Safes/2+Hour+Protection


After failing to get an off-site backup regime instituted for the n'th  
time (based mainly on lack of discipline on the part of the manager  
who was meant to switch tapes every day), I thought there should be a  
company that did it for you.

In principle, the inverse of a bank's night safe.  You'd concrete a  
night safe to the outside of your premises, which would contain the  
removable storage device (eg. removable HDD or RAID carriages, tape  
drive, optical disc writer, line printer, Sinclair Microdrive)  
connected to your network somehow (eg. SAN, Ethernet, whatever), and  
then at the crack of every dawn a man on a bike would turn up, unlock  
the safe, switch the media and take that media back to their HQ   
(Backup-On-A-Bike?  Bikeup?)  Alternatively, he could turn up during  
office hours and ask your receptionist, but that's not as neat and  
dramatic.

Scheduling, tape management and payment would all be done via a secure  
website, with the backend just producing a schedule for the biker.

The same company would keep a backup specialist in house to consult  
and install the backup regime, and for charged-per-incident calls to  
restore, either by popping round with the necessary tapes, or  
restoring the files over the network if it's only a partial restore.

This would be targeted at small companies without dedicated staff, of  
course.

It would also offer online storage, and also teleworking/mobile  
support, where laptops and home machines can be backed up to the same  
regime.

Tom

-- 
Tom Gidden
http://gidden.net/tom/