What is Online Backup?
Because businesses of all sizes now totally rely on data stored on PCs, laptops and servers, data loss through theft, fire, flooding, power failure or technical malfunction could be devastating and could cost your business hundreds or even thousands of pounds! As this can happen at any time, every business needs to have a cast iron backup and restore strategy.
This is why Norman Computer Services recommend a properly maintained backup schedule with reliable hardware and offsite media.
However, Internet technology and performance has improved dramatically over recent years and now Norman Computer Services can offer an online backup solution specifically designed around the type of businesses we support. Whilst we still recommend you continue with your current backup regime, the online option offers additional automatic, encrypted backups to our secure servers in Pocklington; so you don’t need to worry if you forget to change a tape or if the backup fails for any reason. We also have the option of replicating your backups from our server to another datacentre server system.
How does it work?
Because the data is transferred over the Internet, the initial backup can be slow. For this reason we would initially take a full (encrypted) backup to disk and then transfer this to our servers. Once a full backup has been taken, incremental backups are scheduled daily (or more frequently if required). The subsequent backups take much less time because only the new or changed data is transferred to our servers. As with local backups, most of the work happens in the background so it will not impact your daily work.
Free Trial
You can even evaluate our online backup service completely free of charge for 30 days. Should you wish to purchase our product at a later date we can immediately migrate your trial account to a full account. Click here to download
Why is NCS online backup different?
From the tabs below please select a heading to see why NCS online backup is the right choice for your business
Developed For You
Many online backup providers cannot cope with the specialised requirements of server backup. If they can, they generally charge a lot for their services. We have developed our online backup service along with a dedicated online backup software provider, specifically to meet the needs of Small Business Server with Exchange, SharePoint and SQL Server. We have integrated the most useful features of the more expensive offerings into a simple but powerful system at a price you can afford.
Secure
Tape backup does not usually encrypt data and when the tape media is taken offsite, there is a security risk if you lose a tape. NCS Online Backup solution uses powerful technology and high levels of encryption to secure data whilst it is being transferred and stored. The only people who can access your data are your authorized members of staff.
Scalable
Backup quotas can be increased or decreased automatically so you don’t need to plan for the future. Using an online backup solution you can start with the smallest account to suit your immediate requirements and automatically upgrade over time as your data grows. Any number of versions of a file or folder can be stored or restored.
Automated
Once the backup software is installed and configured the whole data protection process is fully automated. There is no additional media to administer and Norman Computer Services monitor and manage the whole process.
Easy Restore
Data loss can occur for many reasons. Using our online backup solution, your backed up data is always accessible, so whatever the cause of loss, files and databases can be restored very easily using the built in web console. If a complete recovery is required, the data can be copied to a disk and brought to your site for faster retrieval.
Cost
Our charges are every bit as attractive as our services. There are no licence fees to pay and we charge a simple monthly fee based on the volume of data you protect – and with no fixed quotas our service will scale as your data grows. Our charging model includes backing up extra servers, mapped drives, remote sites and databases. Thanks to this approach, you can budget based on your specific needs as they change, instead of paying for a fixed price product that offers less flexibility. Compared to most server backup systems, we offer much better value.
Technology
Online backup now offers the highest levels of functionality which can be tailored to meet the requirements of your businesses. Volume Shadow Copy enables backup of open files or databases such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL, Lotus, MySQL. Continuous data protection can enable data to be backed up as it changes. Brick Level Backup enables mail level backup and restore of a Microsoft Exchange database. In-file delta enables block level incremental backups of data. Synthetic restore allows a file or database to be restored as a single file even though it has been backed up incrementally. All this functionality offers total data protection and the simplest restore process.
Norman Computer Services Ltd April 28, 2009