Uh yeah, what you are reading above spells out “Backups” in binary code. Well that was worthwhile information…right? The reason for this example is to remind everyone that data stored on a server boils down to this: zeros and ones. Simple right? Try this one: 000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Give up? That translates to a loss of revenue due to an inevitable loss of customers. The overall translation is that you may be permanently out of business. Why? Believe it or not, a small percentage of the reasons companies go out of business is because they cannot recover from a disaster- in particular, a loss of data. Customer information, financial records, marketing material, and site content, all destroyed. Why? Too busy? You are spending way too much time and energy building your business to let it fizzle away due to not taking the necessary steps to secure its long-term survival.

Plesk’s backup & restore utilities allow the archiving of the Plesk server configuration as well as current user content. That means a faster recovery in the event that you have a server failure: clean re-install, install Plesk, and restore from backup set to bring your server environment back online. Another caveat is Plesk’s alliance with Acronis to offer bare metal server backups (as an add-on option): meaning you can create a complete server backup image and restore the entire server in its entirety in the event a server failure occurs. Basically a much quicker recovery process in the event that you experience a drive failure or any other hardware anomaly.

The other key point to backups is to ensure that you house them either on a separate drive or an external storage space elsewhere on the network. Off-server & Off-site backups are vital to the entire backup process. Storing backups locally on a single drive simply provides another single point of failure. Though you are taking the necessary steps to ensure backups are done, it is a potentially-critical error to store them locally on the same drive you are running backups on. “Putting all your eggs in one basket”….in this case, this cliché can hamper you from recovering in the event your hard drive goes bad or becomes fragmented beyond recovery. The best solutions are to procure a secondary drive exclusively for backups, purchase remote backup space, or implement a private backup server into your hosting environments. All of these solutions are options that your sales representative would be more than happy to go over with you- and our Technical Group will be standing by for assistance with the configuration whenever you require it!

Charlie, a web server administrator and proud customer of FastServers.Net just experienced a server crash and his dedicated server houses a touch over three hundred accounts. Over the course of the last year, Charlie and his partner worked hard gaining new customers, launching a new business, designing a killer website, and spending hard earned money on marketing and advertising.

While on the phone with the FastServers.Net Technical Support team he is calm and ready to take action to get his server back up and running. Charlie authorizes the OS Re-Install and asks the Technical Support team the status of his server’s backups. The answer he receives will either allow Charlie and his hosting company to continue operating or the company will be going out of business quite quickly.

Responses Charlie would like to hear from the FastServers.Net Technical Support Team:

Charlie, it’s a good thing you had a 2nd hard drive setup and backups collecting on it, the reinstall of your server will be done in about two hours and you can restore your hosting accounts from the 2nd hard drive.

WOW - it’s a good idea you offload your backups, the hacker that got into your server wiped your primary and secondary hard drive clean, without the remote backups you would not have any of your data.

Responses Charlie wouldn’t like to hear from the FastServers.Net Technical Support Team:

Charlie, you only have one hard drive which had all of your data on it, the drive is dead and your data is gone. Charlie, while you were responsible enough to have a 2nd Drive and backups taking place the hacker formatted both the primary and secondary drive and your data is gone.

Charlie, you did buy a 2nd drive and backups were setup, however the last successful backup was one year ago.

Charlie, your assumption that since you are a DEFCON 2 Management profile that backups were automatically taken care of was wrong, your data is gone.

Charlie, your data is gone, one of the things you should have been doing was communicating with our Technical Support if you had any questions about maintaining quality backups.

Luckily, Charlie had both a 2nd hard drive and remote backup services from FastServers.Net, his server was restored and he stayed in business.

Moral of the Story

No matter what DEFCON Level you are on, backups are not included as a part of the service package! Be sure to cover this crucial factor with your favorite Sales Engineer today!

At the minimum, if you are relying on FastServers.Net to setup your backups, a single ticket per month to verify all is well is definitely necessary. Neglecting this could result in a future disaster.

A 2nd Hard Drive is a low cost solution, though keep in mind the associated risks, and that in the event your server is compromised data loss can occur from ANY drive attached to your dedicated server.

Working out the details of backups does not require technical knowledge, however it does require you remaining vigilant from month to month!

Hey everybody, hopefully things are going well for you thusfar in 2005!

We’ve had a fairly solid start to the year here at FastServers, and we need to focus on a particular topic that will certainly contribute to the continued solidity of your services & business for that matter!

This may sound ridiculous and/or slightly unnecessary but are you SURE that your internal (business OR personal) email addresses, or other mediums of information transmission, are secured and truly for your eyes alone? It is paramount that you secure your mission-critical accounts: pop3/imap/exchange/webmail/forums/customer databases…. you name it, a security breach can occur throughout a VAST number of separate resources, and in the interest of security you cannot place the value of one interface or service above another. That is to say, put just as much time into constantly maintaining & securing your Hotmail, YahooMail, Instant Messaging programs as you do into securing your webserver environments, customer information storehouses, community forums, exchange servers, and so forth.

You would be surprised at the frequency of security-related incidents that have arisen in recent months- throughout our networks and those of our competitors- that have been traced back to pure negligence as far as keeping passwords both complex and consistently updated on various free service portals. First and foremost, I’d never

recommend utilizing these types of services for even the most harmless internal company communications! The convenience of free webmail interfaces is certainly an enticing factor, but you’d rest MUCH easier if you kept these types of transmissions quarantined to your internal company environments- private dedicated servers, or even separate intranets. There are literally hordes of unscrupulous individuals out there that exist for the sole purposes of circumventing these types of interfaces, while subsequently destroying and/or holding the companies in question hostage for copious amounts of cash.

V ery sad, but very true nonetheless! Considering the situation, please do not be afraid of erring on the side of caution. Inconveniencing yourself or your employees, even your customers- within reason, is certainly an acceptable course of action if the entirety of your business is at stake!

And apparently the main thrust of this newsletter was to encourage backups and comment on best practices, etc. My bad! But fortunately this brief discussion dovetails nicely with assuring the longevity and stability of your business: consistent, well-groomed, properly verified backup procedures are definitely a REQUIREMENT in the life of any successful online venture. Make sure you have these critical factors addressed, for the sake of your business!

FastServers’ Technical Group is MORE than happy to assist with any questions you have in terms of the above points, or other factors mentioned throughout this newsletter. Since a web server crisis isn’t absolutely unavoidable, regardless of the time & resources you invest, you’ve got to ensure that you aren’t adding to the risk by being sloppy with internal security, and you MUST assure a sane and continuous set of recovery data!

It’s a definite no-brainer. Lame term, but occasionally applicable. We will be standing by, as always. Thanks and see you soon.

Maybe even… here? http://forums.fastservers.net !