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An ISN client made the tough decision to make a few staff redundant because of the downturn. They have a tight procedure for handling logon account deactivation and return of security badge, etc. However one of the departing staff asked if his account could be reactivated from 5pm for half an hour so that he could finish off a key piece of documentation. His boss agreed to let him finish the work.

Data wiped out

The next day some of his former work mates found that about 15GB of file data had gone missing - 4,500 files. When the IT support team investigated, they saw from the logs on their NetApp Storage Area Network (SAN) system that a folder which was backed up at 5pm was no longer there at 6pm. On closer inspection, they were able to establish that the missing folders had been deleted at 5:20pm.

Snapshot restore

Their NetApp SAN is set up to take snapshots of all data at hourly intervals, so restoring to the 5pm copy meant that all of the deleted data was able to be restored completely. In addition, it took a mere 10 minutes from noticing that the data was gone to having it all back to normal.

Tape backup?

If our client had relied purely on tape backup then it would certainly have taken a lot longer; many companies only take a tape backup of their data once a day. This would mean that they would have lost a day’s work and it might have taken hours to get the previous might’s version restored.

Investigate better backup methods

The cost of storage is falling and the amount of data held by businesses is growing (some say the it doubles every two years). It is nearly always cheaper to add more space than to prune the data set down to size. However that can create other problems if the backup solution is not scaled up to match.

There are plenty of gotchas in IT. To avoid them, please call our consultants to get some practical advice. We are trained and experienced in providing infrastructure solutions which help businesses be productive, even when the unexpected happens.

ISN have recently been reassessed and reapproved for ISO9001:2008 quality management systems, standards and guidelines for the provision of information technology and telecommunications consultancy services.

The updated certification replaces our previous 9001:2000 accreditation and shows that the company has demonstrated its ability to consistently provide product that meets customer and regulatory requirements. ISO 9001:2008 also aims to enhance customer satisfaction through effective processes for continual improvement.

People often ask us for ways to share files with suppliers, partners and remote workers when those files are too big to be sent as email attachments. After testing a few different approaches we’ve found the easiest way to do it.

One solution has been to set up an FTP site but that can be cumbersome for non-IT people. If hosted on your internal network, it could swamp your internet connection, or even provide a way in for hackers.

Having evaluated various sharing websites, we have found what seems to be the perfect solution in a new service called ShareFile. You can even brand it to look like your web site.

It ticks all the boxes for what we needed:

• Data stored externally
• Secure and encrypted data storage and transfer
• Easy to use for anyone, specialist or not
• Easy to control access for different recipients
• Low cost

ShareFile offer a free trial on www.sharefile.com. If you want to try it out for 30 days without having to submit a credit card, please call me at ISN on 020 7313 9900.

Many business need to send out regular information to their clients and email is the easiest and cheapest way to do it. The wrong approach is to create an email message, attach a document and send it out to 1000 of your contacts. This could cripple your mail server for hours and maybe even get you blacklisted as a spammer.

Here are the two most important tips for creating your own mailshots: Read more »