Back Up of Data - Iris

Back Up of Data - Iris

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Hi all,

I am intrigued to understand how other practices deal with the back ups of their client data.

We use Iris - which we run on our server.

We back up our data onto an external hard drive which is taken off site each day - and there is a rotation of hard drives.

But everyone knows that if one thing will fail, then invariably it will be the hard driver (either in the server or the portable one)

So, we wanted to do a disaster recovery test to ensure that the hard drives are working and that we are backing up the correct information.

But Iris won't provide a test facility without an additional charge.  I know they are a business and all - but really?? for the cost of having the software, you would think I could have a test facility for 8 hours without a massive charge!

What do other Iris users do about backing up their data? and checking the data is viable?

I would appreciate your comments

Replies (9)

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By Bantocks
06th Apr 2016 19:34

Backing up Iris
We have a mirror drive, an external hard drive and we use LiveDrve to back up our client data constantly in the cloud. Even with these in place we still check occasionally, especially the cloud system because we are fairly new to it.

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By Bantocks
06th Apr 2016 20:03

Backing up Iris
We have a mirror drive, an external hard drive and we use LiveDrve to back up our client data constantly in the cloud. Even with these in place we still check occasionally, especially the cloud system because we are fairly new to it.

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By Golum15
06th Apr 2016 20:39

But how do you check that the data will work?
We can check the data is there by plugging in the hard drive. But we don't if it is usable without loading it into iris - and we would have to have a proper test version of iris for this.

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By Clinton Lee
06th Apr 2016 23:59

You are wise to want to test the restore feature. Too often people pay for a backup service and discover, at the worst time, that it doesn't quite recover like they expected it to.

I don't know how much Iris is charging you for the backup, but  I run my own Linux server and for  an additional £20 a month the entire data on the server - multiple websites and several hundred GB - are backed up every night. Even better, they are backed up to a different data centre. I have access to those backups at any time and can restore in bulk or selectively.

As a backup for my backup I have cron jobs on the server to zip and backup the entire contents. You could send that backup to a secure cloud storage account or even, if backup is small enough, can FTP or email it to your local machine.

However, in your case you're still stuck with the problem of having the data but not knowing how it will play out till you can load the data into the third party service (I'm guessing that's how Iris works).

This, unfortunately, is a drawback of using services such as these. I have spent a great deal of time and effort to avoid such reliance in businesses I run. I want software I can download and run locally on my PC, not software that leaves me constantly dependent on a third party service being operational. That usually goes hand in hand with paying just once, not every month. It's sometimes difficult to find such software as the subscription model players make a lot more money and therefore are the only ones you'll find in search engines (whether you're searching for accounting software or SEO backlink analysis software).

So, yes, I don't use Xero or Sage or other online accounting. I don't use Gmail, I use Thunderbird.  I don't use Office 365, I use OpenOffice. And I wouldn't dream of "upgrading" to Windows 10 - I'll switch all my machines to Linux when support for Win 2007 stops.

Maybe I'm a dinosaur, but I've found my style works well for me and I sleep better at night. Whether my PC, server, DNS, cloud backup, host, phone line or ISP goes down, I can get my sites and services (or my access to them) fully operational in under 30 minutes. I am directly dependent on no other parties' services.

The more dependencies we develop the more vulnerable our businesses to a shutdown that's out of our control.

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By Tim Vane
07th Apr 2016 00:40

Sounds like the only vulnerable spot in your plan is, erm, you. That's fine of course, but I like to go on holiday occasionally and let the business carry on without me.

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By dnicholson
07th Apr 2016 10:24

Internet
While agreeing with your general principle, I think you're taking it a bit far. I see you use that Internet thingy though:)

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By Clinton Lee
07th Apr 2016 11:29

Tim Vane, part of a good contingency plan is designing it so it can be easily implemented by multiple people. Design it well and you can sleep on holiday as soundly as you sleep at home. It's not about vesting control with one person, but vesting control within the business rather than outside it.

dnicholson, I've owned and run technology businesses now since the nineties so I've come across the interweb thingy along the way ;). But while online services have grown enormously reliable over the years, I've been in numerous situations where one or the other has failed and it has resulted in business disruption. Modern businesses seem to not realise that the more critical dependencies you develop on 3rd parties the more vulnerable your business. They quite happily sign up for these services without even checking if an equivalent service exists where you pay once and "own" the software forever.

For even online-only assets such as websites there's good reason to occasionally take the pulse of what services are so critical that they'd severely impact business continuity.  Many businesses wouldn't be able to function if their websites failed. But they've no idea that their design is dependent on Google serving fonts, on Yahoo serving APIs, on all kinds of plugins operating normally etc. They are also probably reliant on a dozen or so other third parties including jquery serving, caching services, their SSL provider etc etc. Of course Google doesn't go down everyday, neither does Yahoo, but the more calls you make on scripts, CSS, images or other files/services located off your server the higher the chance of business disruption.

You can't avoid dependencies in business, but a business needs to know the extent to which they rely on third parties and not unnecessarily take on new ones if there are alternatives.

With respect Iris, it seems the OP now has a choice to pay them more money to test the recover facility. Should a real recovery ever be required, the OP would need to pay whatever they demand at that time.

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By Golum15
07th Apr 2016 11:45

Yes - I had thought that if a real recovery is required, then Iris can effectively demand what they like and I am at their mercy (although I would like to think an insurance payout will soften the blow!)

I have been chatting to my IT guy today - and he is very surprised that Iris have asked for this fee as any IT company worth its salt would recommend a Disaster Recovery Test on a regular basis to ensure back ups are sufficient - so I can't be the first to ask!

Ransomware is becoming more common for smaller companies (ie not just Moonpig or TalkTalk) because they are a soft target - so a Disaster Recovery Scenario is more likely!

 

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By Clinton Lee
07th Apr 2016 15:05

In addition to the ransom risk, there's the viability risk - if their business ever goes under  ...can you migrate all your data to alternate software or are you dead in the water? Will you even get access to your data in any usable form?

Related article.

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