BackupPilot

For Education

How Safe is Your Data ... continued :

Where are you now?

The Becta guidance on backup technology makes it clear that educational institutions should be taking steps to ensure that both curriculum and administrative data is recoverable. This means having a backup strategy in place and ensuring that people responsible for carrying out backup procedures are appropriately trained.

But for a school to reach this point, a suitable method of backup needs to be selected. Most schools currently store data and information on standalone PCs, on servers or laptops located in the school building. However, no matter how well ICT equipment is treated, any number of uncontrollable situations can arise which will jeopardise the safety of information, meaning that data can be lost irrevocably. Whether it is a simple mistake such as overwriting files or an unavoidable error such as disc corruption, things can go wrong. Equally, no matter how many safety procedures are in place, theft, fire, power surges, hackers or internet viruses can all destroy valuable information.

Of those schools that do have a backup system in place, some store students' work on floppy disks, and others copy information to a hard drive on a nominated PC in the school. This selected computer may be affected by any of the above happenings and backups will then be rendered useless. The most widely used backup method is tapes, but this is fraught with its own set of problems. Tapes are expensive, have a limited life, need weekly and monthly rotations, require off-site storage and suitable security and management. In addition to this, even with diligent tape handling and storage, the data restoring process can fail 30% of the time. And while many schools might manage this process effectively, there are no doubt occasions when the carefully backedup tapes are left in the same location as the server, making them just as vulnerable to fire or theft as the original data source.

A downfall of both of these approaches is also the heavy reliance on manual, tedious tasks. Whether it is copying files to a central storage PC relying on the consistency of all staff or a backup tape system which might be controlled by an ICT co-ordinator, both approaches still require time and effort and can all too easily be overlooked or simply fall foul of human error.

The 21 st century solution

However, there is an alternative way to approach backup. Remote backup is this century's solution and is already being used in some establishments and trialled in many others. In its simplest form, all data both administrative and curriculum based saved at school is transferred off the premises to a remote storage facility. This is highly practical as, should any faults and problems occur at the school site, including the aforementioned fire or flood, copies of files and applications are safely held elsewhere.

Equiinet's solution to remote backup, BackupPilot, also incorporates other features which makes it particularly suitable to the school environment. Firstly, some remote backup services can require the installation of software on all machines before transmitting an initial full backup to the remote facility over the internet. This is not a simple process. The installation of software is time consuming and sending huge amounts of data via the internet for initial backup could take literally days, an option which is clearly not viable for a school. Agentless architecture, such as BackupPilot, avoids this issue. It works without the need to add any new software and without using up valuable disc space. And the initial backup is run to a removable drive which is then physically sent to the data centre, making it much simpler and faster to get started.

After this process, only amendments or changes need to be backedup. This means there is a smaller volume of files, so the ongoing backup can take place through the school's broadband connection. The new backups are automatically transmitted to the remote location using the broadband connection through the night. Backingup continues after the school lights have gone out, working through the night so that ICT staff don't have to.

Automated backup is two tiered: firstly, local copies of important school data are backedup on site and then secondly another copy is automatically transmitted to the school's remote central data centre. It is important to point out that this is not just about backingup files and documents but also all the different PCs, applications and servers which are used in school as well. The whole backup schedule is then set up and managed at one central point which keeps administration and management of backups to a minimum, uses an existing resource to its full potential and offers greater reliability.

Providing additional peace of mind, data sent over the internet through BackupPilot is compressed and encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption, meaning bandwidth usage is kept to a minimum and security, especially of administration material, is guaranteed. Not only is encryption used during transmission but also at the data centre. So data centre staff cannot access the schools' information as the same high security mechanism is in place to store files.

When it comes to backup, the storage can be as efficient as you like but unless restoration of files is simple and straightforward when data is actually lost, the system will leave a lot to be desired. Restoring information via a remote backup solution such as BackupPilot is fast, reliable and efficient whether it is just a few files or an entire server which has been lost. And everything restored directly from BackupPilot is much easier and faster to find than searching on tape, plus it is recovered at LAN speed and therefore can be restored very quickly. This is just one example of the best of both worlds approach of using a solution which has a physical presence within the school but does not rely on the school's network or any single PC or server to keep operating.

Teachers, learners and all school staff are finding new ways to use technology every day. From more efficient sharing of lessons plans amongst staff via learning platforms, to innovative online projects and time-saving administrative systems, the more fully schools embrace technology's benefits, the more essential it is to ensure that all of this information is recoverable. Backup isn't a nice to have, it should be integral to every school's policy and now there is a solution out there designed to meet schools' needs.

BackupPilot, Equiinet's advanced remote backup solution offers:

Comprehensive backup of all laptops, PCs and servers
Agentless architecture - requires no extra software, hardware or disk space
The option to be managed centrally or locally
Easy-to-use management interface to define what to backup and restore
Simple, speedy initial backups
Capability to continue operation while backup is occurring
No dependency on unreliable tapes and accompanying storage and security problems

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