Joined on 05-10-2002
TechSoup Member
If any smallish nonprofits would be willing to share their disaster or critical data backup plans (the actual document), it would be very helpful. I'm looking forward to watching the discussion.
Thanks!
It would be great if someone would dive in and offer 'real-world' plans for discussion, otherwise we will hopefully be able to provide sample plans later today or tomorrow.
Don
Joined on 04-14-2003
TechSoup Member
We're a small non-profit (staff of 3) and we back up our important files to an external hard drive daily. I'd also like to see sample plans from other organizations so we'll know what else we can do to protect our data. With our current system, we wouldn't be able to retrieve our files if our office were broken into and the computers and backup hard drive were stolen.
Andrea
Joined on 08-17-2006
TechSoup Member
It is obviously important to have a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP). But all of the plans are not worth the "paper that they are written on" with actual regular testing. You can create these plans but you must also have "real world testing". We are a small non-profit but I have testing plans and have tested backups/restores often. We have 2 databases here that are extremly important to test restores on a regular schedule. Luckily we do D2D backups so it is very easy to perfrom restores often.
We also burn backups to DVD's
Richard
Joined on 05-10-2007
TechSoup Member
Lets go back a step - what are the risks we are trying to manage with a data backup plan?
* Failure of a single machine - hard drive failure, motherboard failure
* Damage or destruction to office by water, fire etc
* Failure of existing backup
Multiple backups are often required - an onsite backup will be faster to recover from, but an offsite backup is also required in case an event damages the whole office including onsite backups.
And what do we value? Is it more important for us to be up and running as quickly as possible with limited data (initially) or is data more important than time to recover?
Many of these questions need further clarification before you can produce a plan to protect your organisations data.
Cheers Gav
Joined on 05-10-2002
TechSoup Member
Thanks for all the feedback. I'll share a little more about our situation. We're a medium sized nonprofit with 4 sites. We do not have an IT department, just 3 accidental techies. When we're over our heads we bring in a consultant. We try to keep things simple so that we don't have to create a real IT department. We don't have a real network, just peer to peer for internet sharing and we use a web-based data management system (Community TechKnowledge's Online Data Manager) and Google Apps.
We're in the middle of developing a technology plan using Tech Atlas. (I like it a lot.) For backup, it's been every person for themselves, and some are better than others. We're considering using an NAS (network attached storage device) at each location and then use Mozy Pro to backup each of those.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Jason Schwartz
www.dawnfarm.org
Joined on 09-08-2003
TechSoup Member
That is something else you need to consider as well. Most people focus on the PC data locally, but what about 3rd party applications, hosted off-site?
Are you allowed to export/download your data for backup?
What are your vendor's Disaster Recovery plans look like?
How do they ensure you can get to your data in the event of a disaster for them?
How can you get access in the case of a disaster for you?
What happens to your data if they go out of business, or it's sold? Can you get access? Can you prohibit access?
Another thing that is important when developing disaster recovery plans is the non-IT processes and documentation.
Do you have critical workbooks, charts, folders that aren't available in electronic form that are critical to the running of the business?
For example, we have a scheduler in our clinical software, but the front desk is using a paper appointment book to schedule doctor appointments . The appointments on paper eventually get entered into the scheduler by the night staff.
This is an issue, for if we have a fire, I can restore the schedules in the application, but if the appointment book gets destroyed, we've lost ?? who knows how many future doctor appointments. How do we recover that?
Hi Jason,
Thanks for sharing. I am sure TechAtlas will touch on this, but it's also worthwhile to consider your data's growth rate and whether online backup will be cost-effective say, 1 year from now. I do like the NAS as an intermediary solution, as they are often quite fast and have built-in redundancy, but not as costly as a full server solution. Once again, with four sites, you may be reaching a point when the benefit of implementing a server and WAN solution is much greater than the costs associated. I use Google Docs regularly but a lot of it is beyond my control, which gets me weary. There may be privacy concerns that can't be compromised with an online solution.
Kevin
Joined on 05-14-2007
TechSoup Member
Hi - let me first introduce myself - my name is erin and as my nick suggests, I do SEO but I also do quite a bit of tech work.
My ideal back up is of course one that is implemented, and the only good back up is usually one thats automated - otherwise it doesn't get done regularly.
I suggest two external hard drives (alternating days or weeks) - one stays and one goes home with a trusted person or put into a fireproof safe. I prefer NAS drives because you can simply plug them directly into a network swicth/hub and assign it an IP address and all computers within a network can back up to it.
The best and easiest software I have found is actually free and its called Cobain Backup: http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm.
You can do incremental or full backups with it and its totally automated - and it even will backup over any type of network - so really a hard drive isnt really required, and with incremental backups, only the first time back up goes slow - subsequent backups are a snap.
I hope some of you find this information helpful!
Hi Erin,
Thanks for the info - do you have a link to an English language version of the download site?
Joined on 05-14-2007
TechSoup Member
Oh wow. The "." at the end of the link messed it up.
http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm
Sorry about that!