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Every business requires a disaster recovery plan. We can assist you with setting this up and maintaining it to make sure you have your system restored in good time.
We have survived a number of disasters in our computer systems ranging from disc crashes to monitors failing. You need a backup strategy and several copies scattered all over the place to ensure survival. Redundancy is very important. These days this is called cloud computing where files are stored on the Web and do not require the local PC to be as protected. If the PC crashes, a new PC is bought and the work continued using the system on the Web.
Many sites and small businesses now backup their entire system remotely to enable them to recover from disaster or loss in their main site.
In March 2011, we have extended our range to include remote backup via Netgear ReadyNAS. We can now backup and restore to offsite servers or backup to the eGnyte cloud (Web). This is perfect for low-support small business applications.
In January 2012, we also imported contacts from another phone's SIM to a Nokia MeeGo phone.
We used Nokia Account to backup contacts from Nokia MeeGo to Web and then restore them from Web to Nokia MeeGo when phone was flashed. We also imported the contact CSV file into a private Web database.
We will also import contacts from another phone via Bluetooth.
We downloaded lost apps from Nokia Store.
SMS messages were not backed up so were lost when the Nokia 6230 was lost. Backup at Nokia Care did not work on the old Nokia 6230's SMS messages but on everything else - phone numbers, images, audio files, video files.
The Nokia N950 froze up and said 'too frequent boots - reflash device' when I tried to boot the phone when the battery was nearly flat and had inadequate power to boot. I ignored the message and powered up using power switch and the device luckily booted. I then backed up images and audio recordings via developer SDK. I plan on writing an FTP tool that will allow users to backup their phone's images, video, audio, phone numbers and SMS to an FTP site of their choosing via USB, SD Card, wifi or 3G. A Linux single user mode needs to be setup so a Nokia support person or developer can boot and rescue important files before reformatting and reinstalling the system. Too much vital information is stored on a smartphone and proper backups need to be setup or the phone will lose vital data if it crashes with a disaster recovery plan.
On Nokia N950, I did Settings / Sync and Backup / Backup and then FTPed the Backup files to the PC or select 'use as mass storage device' when USB is plugged into phone. Go to Accounts / Nokia / Synchronise to backup contacts to account.nokia.com. To enter changed password, go to Store / Download an item.
In October 2010, we moved our bookkeeping to a private Web portal rather than rely on old PCs and managing upgrading Windows. We do bulk uploads of records to Web and report for tax purposes and business accounts using the Web instead of PC software making us more agile and flexible and not forcing us to come back to Orange to do accounts.
Cloud computing is where the user uses applications loaded from the Internet. The data is stored offsite, perfect for mobile applications or disaster/recover options for small businesses with small IT budgets and pay by the month modes.
Installing ReCAPTCHA on Web site forms to prevent bots trashing the email system is also done by us. Contact us for an example. No more bots get through now.
To save hardware, we can create virtual machines to run your applications. This allows us to run Linux and Windows on top of each other. We did this on limited hardware in Brisbane to enable us to test software running on FreeBSD, SuSE Linux and Fedora Linux all on a Windows XP Pro PC without having to install them on separate partitions. This is heaven for a sysop with a limited budget.
This flexibility improves agility and produces quick disaster recovery. This is what they had to do after September 11, 2001 in USA - move their staff to another location and rebuild servers from backups to survive using minimal hardware and working over the Internet from remote locations. Many sites or small businesses worldwide now backup to a remote server for a monthly fee per Gigabyte. This is now called cloud computing.
cuUsing virtualization, snapshots of various operating systems like Unix, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Windows can be saved and then reloaded on a totally different operating system allowing for very quick response should the hardware fail or a system be overrun with viruses or spambots due to lax security.
This is ideal for setting up various work or test machines without having to purchase many pieces of hardware to run them on.
If the customer provides us with a support ticket with configuration information in it to reproduce a bug, we can login to our own virtual server and reproduce the errors without having to go near their server and deploy a fix for the problem from our inhouse resources.
If the customer does not have enough modern PCs to run test machines, we can install VMWare and load a virtual operating system image to test systems at low cost and high efficiency and enable us to get on with the job despite a lack of dedicated hardware on the customer's premises. We have done this onsite in Brisbane when we were doing technical support for a small company and just could not get a spare PC to test systems on to achieve our objectives. VMWare virtual images are a great way to get around these hardware limitations often foisted upon us to save money by the customer.
As usual it is easier to spend our own time and money doing virtualization than waiting for ages for the customer to spend money then ending up doing it for them for free just to get a job done on time and make money. This seems to be how small businesses avoid paying any money - they put financial pressure on suppliers and in the end they donate equipment or time to get a job going rather than have it fold due to the customer avoiding investing in equipment and training. The tradeoff is we own the technology and bring our own tools to the job to avoid delays so the customer owns nothing and just gets a service.
Other common jobs are rebuilding PCs with Windows XP or Vista, Linux or FreeBSD.
Two examples:
We do not provide 24/7 monitoring using tools like nagios as we are too small and lack resources. We examine standard logs and deduct the best way of repairing the security breach or restoring the system to a safe restore point from backups.
Get in touch if you need help rebuilding, upgrading, recovering, backing up, virtualization of your system or protecting of Web forms from bots. We have experience with Windows and Linux both local and remote backup to disk, flash drive or tape and to the Web.
We have experience with gigabytes of backups.