Your data really is your business — it’s as simple as that. An order is meaningless if you don’t who ordered what; chasing money is not going to be very successful if you don’t know how much you’re owed and for how long you’ve been owed it. And, if you’re selling, ‘goodwill’ is worth nothing without the comprehensive customer and trading records that show that your business has actually earned some of it over the years. In short, that fancy computer system is only as good as the data it stores. The real challenge of data storage is to manage and organise data in a rational manner that gives the best retrieval speed and makes backing up quick and easy.
The primary data storage medium is the hard drive in your desktop, notebook PC and your network server if you have one. They are engineering miracles these days, very reliable and with data capacity of up to 400Gbyte, although standard units would be 80 to 120Gbyte. But hard drives aren’t failsafe and serious damage or data corruption can be caused by accidental liquid spills or magnetic interference.
Fatal flaw
No business should rely solely on a single drive to hold all its information but chances are your business does. PC users are naturally inclined to store data on their own computers, especially stuff they work on regularly like Word documents, e-mail and so on. This means that data information can end up being scattered across a number of different computers. For example, it is common for a firm’s customer list to belong to the accounts PC, enabling a salesperson to quickly look up a customer and check account status details. But a letter or e-mail to that same client will likely stay on the salesperson’s own computer, probably grouped with their other MS Word or Outlook files. The same applies to every application in an organisation, with the result that its essential trading information is all over the place. Typically, as Tom Kane, sales manager of data storage specialists CMS Peripherals points out, only the corporate data like accounts, stock and so on is on the server — and not always consistently. ‘So a desktop PC has a fatal heart attack or the sales manager’s laptop is nicked and you discover that some pretty vital information has gone with it.’
There are plenty of options to choose from when opting for your chosen method of storage. Whether it’s CD, DVD disc or sever based, the important thing is choosing that medium that best fits your needs.
There is actually no substitute for the discipline of organising your data in a rational way rather than letting it simply accumulate wherever people or applications happen to put it. Whether you’re a micro-business or a big outfit with an IT department, you have to decide how you want to structure your data and then ensure that your staff stick to it. In practice, this is seldom a problem since most users are not really interested in changing things around. However, you do have to insist that users follow the data rules,’ says David Johnston, managing director of Response IT, a networking and systems company with offices in Galway and Belfast.
Safeguarding with RAID
Johnston points to the example of Rhatigan and Company, a mixed architectural and engineering practice based in Sligo. ‘Their day-to-day data is around 25Gbyte, which certainly a level that requires careful management. Much of it, of course, consists of Computer Aided Design drawing and designs for various projects at various stages of completion,’ he explains. ‘All 17 staff are instructed to save all work on the server, usually in various shared folders under the general heading of Projects. But each person can also have a personal folder, with secure password-protected access if they wish.’ The importance, of course, is that the essential safeguarding of all of that work is then simplified.
Rhatigan and Company’s primary data storage is on three 36Gbyte drives using RAID 5. RAID is one of the better bits of IT jargon that in its original Californian stood for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. The idea was just that you took a set of ordinary disk drives and spread the data across them to multiply the odds against total loss. ‘Inexpensive’ was later quietly replaced by ‘Independent’ to explain the technology better as it became the mainstream solution. Raid Level 5 refers to the industry numbering system (which goes 0 to 7) but the thing to remember is that a higher level does not mean either greater security or better performance. The ‘levels’ refer to the different approaches to using the disk array capacity to achieve your data storage objectives. RAID Level 1 is simple ‘disk mirroring’ — two drives, identical copy data on each. If one fails, you carry on regardless, which is about the least any small business should look for on its network server.
In Rhatigan’s case, daily backup on tape is standard — and faster and more reliable because the data is all in one place. Another benefit is that the firm’s data storage capacity can be kept at an optimum because it is also easy to archive data at the end of its life cycle (eg completed projects) onto DVDs for long term storage. ‘When we set up the new system the essential data on the server was reduced from over 35Gbyte to 25Gbyte by taking off old material for archiving,’ says David Johnston.
Similar considerations arose when MT Hamm, civil engineers in Knocklyon, Dublin, recently decided to revamp its entire set of systems. ‘We had nearly 40Gbyte of essential data, most of it large AutoCAD files that could be 5MByte and more each,’ explains managing partner Martin Hamm. ‘We always backed up, of course, but with our old single server any maintenance work had to be on a weekend or we effectively closed for a day.’ Designed and installed by their long-time supplier Centric IT, the Hamm network now has even the operating system mirrored so that there should be no downtime while its data is securely held on a new, RAID-protected server with automated tape backup.
Critical data
Clearly, design professionals have somewhat unique data storage requirements, at least in the sense that their files are very large and actually ARE the fruit of their work. Yet similar criteria actually apply in any business. Data is critical, it holds the value in your business, whether that consists of intellectual property like designs or software or customer and sales records, stock control, etc. In every business, your accounts information is critical. The first essential in any data storage system in any organisation is the accurate and secure retention of information. The second is, of course, to facilitate users in working with that information, which is where the more technical aspects of speed of access and so on come into play. Today’s servers and disk drives are very fast (and have come down quite a bit in price terms) compared to equipment of even the late 1990s, which means that individual users around the network can enjoy data retrieval performance equivalent — or even superior — to having everything on their own PCs.
So if your data storage has just grown with the business, like so many smaller enterprises, this is a very good time to review the whole shebang.
Back Up and Back Up Your Backups!
The first lesson for all computer users, especially in business, is always: ‘Back up, back up, back up.’ The wonders of the computer do not include total reliability. Hard drives seize up and die, PCs are stolen, fire and flood do happen — maybe even together, when the fire brigade arrives. Severe virus and worm attacks make wiping the entire hard drive the best solution when things go pear-shaped. In truth, everyone knows perfectly why you should back up. But it’s a chore, so keeping it simple is the best way to ensure that it actually gets done. Nowadays there are inexpensive choices of external media that allow you to back up your data simply and quickly and do what the experts all recommend — store copies off the premises for additional safety.
Key Points
Try and restore from your backup — and not just the first time you run through the exercise. Backup routines inevitably become chores, automated ones go wrong and manual ones become sloppy. So check exactly what’s on your backup regularly. Empty directories and multiple copies of the same file are the kinds of errors that have shown up when the disaster has happened!
There is no need to back up the entire contents of your hard drive, including your programs, as so many firms do and are indeed perhaps advised to do. A totally successful restoration of programs and data from a backup medium is by no means automatic. There will often be quirks and kinks to be ironed out, including programs that won’t run. You may also be moving to new systems. Data is less often corrupted but it does occur. If the worst does happen, reinstalling your operating system and applications will be a bit of a bore but it’s actually a cleaner option. If you have some bespoke software or adaptations, insist that the developer gives you a clean copy that can be installed on any compatible or replacement system.
Make backing up easy by keeping all of your data in one place, ideally in one master directory on the network server, if you have one, or on each PC. That should certainly include e-mail — it’s amazing how much business information lodges there — and faxes if you are using ‘soft’ or electronic faxing. Images/graphics can also be important in some businesses. Applications will always let you change the default folder in which files are saved. Now all you have to do is copy your data directory onto the backup medium, which will usually be a simple drag and drop operation on PC or Mac.
So where do you back up to? The first option is simple: Install a second hard drive on the server or PC for about EUR*100 upwards. Almost every PC can take up to three drives without any special modification. Then it really is just a couple of mouse clicks to copy your data across at the end of the day while you can work away or put your coat on to go home!
But if something happens to the computer or to the office, that may not save your business. So all of your data should be copied periodically onto an alternative medium that can be kept somewhere safe off-site. Unless you have a very quiet business, daily backup should be normal and weekly the minimum. But it’s both easy and cheap.
For a small network with a lot of data, there is still a very strong case to be made for tape backup. It is semi-automated (somebody has to change the tapes), hardware and software are well proven and cycling a five-set through the week is an excellent solution for small trading businesses. But tape and automation is not a cheap solution — entry level about EUR*1,000 — so probably too expensive for smaller businesses.
The CD solution is quickly becoming the most popular option, since CD-writers and blank CDs are replacing diskettes as the universal portable medium. A CD is a very versatile and cheap backup solution with 700MB blank CDs for under 50c if you buy by the pack. But a ‘burn’ can be slow enough (up to 30 minutes on slower drives) and not always 100 per cent successful, especially if the PC is performing any other tasks at the same time. CD-RW re-writables are an option also, but more expensive than the ‘disposables’. DVD is now coming on the scene affordably and with 4.7Gbyte capacity (and higher levels promised soon) may well be the medium of the future but the same considerations apply to burning a DVD as a CD.
Zip disks are pocketable, now come in capacities up to 750Mbyte, are easy to use with drag-and-drop copying and indefinitely re-usable. Iomega also produces software for data synchronization and backup.
Other options include a range of portable hard drives that link to your PC by USB or the faster FireWire and with capacities from 20 to 120 GByte — that’s a lot of data! Neat and stylish, they start at about EUR*125 but of course you need more than one to ensure an off-site copy at all times.
05/04/04
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