Dedicated ServersAre you protected from data loss?
Data loss is a horrible thing to deal with. Unfortunately, data can be irretrievably destroyed in a variety of ways, including:
- File corruption
- Hard drive failure
- System misconfiguration
- Human/operator error (accidental deletion or modification)
You might be thinking, “Oh.. that only happens to ‘other people’. I’m careful!” The reality is, nearly every web developer and sysadmin has dealt with some form of data loss at least once. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, congratulations! Unfortunately, the odds are against you…. Don’t let yourself be a victim and lose time, dollars, business, or reputation!
Even the fanciest web cluster in the world, with redundant database servers and multiple RAID sets, won’t save you if, say, your web designer accidentally deletes a directory of important files. It happens. However, with an automated backup solution in place for your server, you can rest easily, confident in the knowledge that you can quickly restore files when things go wrong. Additionally, you can roll-back to a date prior to your data loss or file corruption.
Introducing CariNet’s Brand-New Automated Backup Service
Our brand-new backup service is powered by Bacula, an open source, enterprise-grade network backup software utility. It provides fully automated backups at any time you choose, PLUS fully automated recovery! You don’t even need to call us when you need your data.
Best of all, this solution also works for Windows servers. Don’t be left out in the cold any longer! Virtually any flavor of Unix/Linux is supported (Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, FreeBSD) as well as Windows Server 2003, Server 2008, XP, and 2000.
- Fully automated
- Reliable
- You control exactly:
- » What gets backed up (files/directories to include or exclude)
- » When the backup occurs (e.g. Sundays at 3:00 am PST)
- » How often the backup occurs (daily incremental OR weekly “full”)
- Linux AND Windows OS support
- Minimal resource consumption on your server
- “Bare metal” restoration possible for worst-case scenarios
- Web interface for on-the-fly management of backups (see below)
How much $$ for all of this flexibility?
We’re now providing twice the space for the same price as before! Only $25 per month for 60 GB of storage space, with NO setup fee!
Due to the way Bacula works, be sure to purchase at least twice the space you think you will need. For example, if you have 30 GB of data to back up, you actually need 60 GB. This is to ensure that Bacula has enough space to retain at least one complete previous backup while it is in the process of pulling a new one.
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If you anticipate needing significantly more space than this, or have a lot of servers to back up, we will soon be offering dedicated Bacula storage appliances, with capacity from 500 GB to 5+ TB. Contact us if you are interested in this. |
The nitty gritty details.
Our backup cluster utilizes Bacula software. Read more about it on www.bacula.org.
Bacula maintains a catalog of all of your backed-up files, allowing you to quickly find and restore any desired file. The system will retain multiple versions of each file depending on the overall amount of storage space available. This means you’re not necessarily stuck with the most recent version of a file if you were overzealous while editing it – you may be able to restore a version of it from yesterday, 3 days ago, or last month!
Setup is simple. After your order is provisioned, simply follow the provided instructions to install and configure the Bacula client on your server. This client allows our backup cluster to contact your server and retrieve data. You will be assigned a secure password to use for this communication. Then specify exactly what directories and files to include or exclude in the backup to tailor it to your needs.
That’s it! Your first backup will be retrieved within 24 hours, and you can now breathe a well-deserved sigh of relief, confident in the knowledge that you can restore specific files, or even your entire filesystem *, whenever you need them. The best part is that you are in complete control. Very soon you will be able to restore your own files via a web interface – no more waiting for a sysadmin on the other side of the world to retrieve your data and send it to you whenever you need something.
Note: until the “web restore” feature is available, it is still necessary to contact CariNet when you need a restoration, but that process is quick and easy.
* “Bare metal” restoration of your entire server onto a blank hard drive is only possible if you are backing up EVERY file on your server.
You can select your backup frequency depending on your needs and how often your files are changing. We offer both “Daily” and “Weekly” backups. “Daily” pulls a full backup once a week, on a day that you select, plus daily incremental backups that store only the differences in files since the previous day. “Daily” backups should be sufficient for most users.
You can also choose your optimal hour of the day for the backup to be performed, therefore you are no longer locked into the rigid “only at midnight” schedule other providers use. This allows you to schedule things like a mysql database dump at 2am, then your Bacula data pull at 3am, which guarantees that you’ll always have the database backed up in a usable format.
What are you waiting for? Even if you don’t think that the data on your server is “important enough” to warrant a backup, consider the headaches you’ll save in the long run.
Your data, your backups, by your rules. Easy.
For even more information regarding backups, visit our Frequently Asked Questions section.
