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Disaster Recovery

Understanding Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

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Disaster Recovery as a Service, commonly known as DRaaS, is a cloud-based solution provided by third-party service providers. It enables organizations to failover to a secondary site in the event of a disaster, without the high expense or complexity of maintaining their own private disaster recovery (DR) environment. Instead of a costly upfront investment, businesses can pay a manageable monthly fee for access to offsite disaster recovery (DR) environments when needed. The on-demand DRaaS setup allows for simplified disaster recovery testing and quick failover recovery during emergencies. Planning for DRaaS While DRaaS simplifies disaster recovery compared to building your own DR site, having a solid plan in place is crucial. Properly incorporating DRaaS ensures that the system is deployed effectively and can be relied on during an actual disaster. Key Considerations for DRaaS Implementation Spinning up virtual machines in an offsite data center may be simple, but ensuring that users can access critical services after a disaster can be challenging. Here are some essential questions to guide your DRaaS planning: Managed and Unmanaged DRaaS DRaaS solutions typically fall into three categories: unmanaged, partially managed, and fully managed. Each option offers varying levels of control and support. Unmanaged, Self-Service DRaaS For organizations with in-house IT expertise, unmanaged DRaaS may be ideal. The client is responsible for correctly implementing the service, conducting disaster recovery testing, and maintaining a DR plan. It’s important to perform annual DR tests or after any major system changes. Partially Managed DRaaS Partially managed DRaaS suits organizations that can handle DRaaS on a part-time basis but prefer some external assistance. Service providers may help with initial setup, monitor the replication process, and alert you to potential issues. Fully Managed DRaaS Fully managed DRaaS is perfect for organizations that lack the time or expertise to manage disaster recovery processes in-house. While fully managed services may come at a higher cost, the long-term benefits far outweigh the expense. With full management, businesses can focus on strategic growth rather than disaster recovery.

Veeam

Enabling Veeam Remote Management

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Whether you are a new customer of ours or have been protecting your data with us for a while, there are many reasons to enable Remote Management on your Veeam B&R or Veeam Agent Installations. Remote Logging: This allows us to see a more detailed description of what is going wrong. Without Remote Logging, we only see info on jobs that sends data to us, and very limited info if something fails. With it on, we can notify you with more detail of issues even on local jobs so you can get your backups running smoother. Self-Service Failover: If you use our DRaaS and have a Failover Plan configured, you can log into our Veeam Availability Console (VAC) and initiate a failover Remote Management: Also from the VAC, you can enable, disable, and kick off jobs without needing access to your Veeam B&R Console Enabling it is easy, just follow one of the methods below. Method 2 is if you are doing Veeam Agent backups to us without a Backup and Replication installation, or Method 1 has trouble starting the services for some reason. Method 1 This requires that Veeam B&R to be installed and you have your Service Provider info from us, or have already connected. During the Service Provider set up, or by going to Backup Infrastructure then Service Providers and right-clicking the provider’s name. Please select the Allow this Veeam Backup & Replication installation to be managed by the service provider at the bottom of the window. Then just finish out the wizard, providing the Service Provider Info for the Credentials if you have not already, and wait for the progress window to complete. You should see the Management agent logo in your systray and it should show connected. If Not, try Method 2 Method 2 This method manually installs the Remote Management Agent service and is required if you want Remote Management of a Veeam Agent backup and a Backup and Replication server is not used. You will need your Service Provider Info. Download the agent manually here, unzip it, and run the installer. After running the installer, check to see if the Agent is running in the system task tray. If the Agent has not connected, provide the Service Provider Info and hit Apply. As always, if you have any issues, please contact our support team and we will gladly assist you in getting the management agent enabled!

Ransomware

5 Reasons Why Ransomware is a Threat Now More than Ever

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Ransomware attacks have been in the news a lot recently and are affecting companies of all sizes and industries. Why does this keep happening when the repercussions are so profound? We give you 5 simple reasons. 1. There Are Many Vulnerable Targets Ransomware doesn’t discriminate when it comes to choosing their target. Attackers know that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and local governments, due to their limited resources, are a good place to target because they have so much to lose, and usually don’t have safeguards in place to prevent or recover from the attack. A recent Bleeping Computer article reported that 70 percent of ransomware attacks targeted SMBs with an average demand of $116,324, and State Scoop reported that two-thirds of ransomware attacks in 2019 alone have targeted state and local governments, with Lake City and Riviera Beach paying up to $1.1 million collectively. 2. Companies Are Willing to Pay Big Bucks to Access Their Data Think about how much revenue your company would lose if you lost access to your data for one hour? One day? Over a week? What if you lost access to confidential records of your patients, students or employees? You would probably be willing to pay a high price to get it back quickly. Hackers know the potential damage this could cause, and when the ransom is getting paid in the millions, they have more motivation to gain access to your data. 3. Attacks Are Becoming More Complex One of the best ways to prevent a ransomware attack is to know how to spot one. Often times these attacks come linked in an email, but they aren’t always easy to spot, especially when they look like they’re coming from brands you trust like Microsoft, Amazon or Netflix. We almost went through this recently when receiving an Office 365 email that looked very real. A good tip is to check your links before clicking on them on a plain text editor to make sure they’re safe. However, training your users to be experts at identifying malicious links in email can be a daunting task. Consider using a resource like KnowBe4 to identify users that are vulnerable to phishing attacks. 4. Top Management Does Not Put Emphasis on Data Protection or Recovery Testing In many cases, upper management doesn’t see the value of investing in proper data protection or recovery testing. Lake City for example just experienced a huge ransomware hit where they were forced to pay out $460,000. Lake City’s IT Chief pointed out vulnerabilities in the system years before but had no money to fix the issues. Getting top management to appreciate and demand comprehensive and professionally managed data protection is key. Without buy-in from management the appropriate funding levels will most likely never be met, nor will it be communicated as a priority to IT staff that data protection is a highly valued objective. 5. IT Admins Are Not Always Well Trained or Certified in Data Protection Although your IT staff may be highly trained in different areas, most aren’t highly trained or focused on backup and recovery. IT staff needs to have the training and time to focus on data protection even when other high priority IT initiatives invariably arise. IT staff needs to be redundant with others trained and experienced so that when someone takes a vacation or takes another job, the data protection system is not neglected. Not having this expertise can also be a far greater cost. How We Can Help Ready to defend against ransomware for your business? Set up a time to talk to a backup and DR expert here: Fill out this form for more information!

DRaaS

You Guys Can Just Restore My VMs to Your Environment for Disaster Recovery (DR), Right?

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Quick Answer: Sure we can! But… This question often comes up when a client is looking for offsite backup but wants the ability to do offsite disaster recovery (DR) without having to pay for our DR as a Service (DRaaS). They want to have DR capabilities, but not the associated costs (unless a major event happened). The question is logical. Since Managecast would hold a copy of the client’s data in the form of backups it would be possible to restore these backups into our disaster recovery environment. However, there are some cautions which should be clearly understood. The first is that without actually going through the process to test, the end result will not be clear. Maybe it all works great, maybe it does not. This is why we recommend DR testing. Using backups to perform DR is a manual and time-intensive process, so testing becomes expensive and the client is asking the question because they are trying to minimize cost, so most who ask this question are not looking to pay to have DR tested. Understandable. Then a disaster hits, maybe a year or two down the road, and the boss is screaming to get the systems operational. Everyone is on edge and demanding the systems be up ASAP. Definitely a bad time to be testing DR – during an actual DR event (which is what is happening.) Testing is being performed when time is of the essence. Bad combination! Here is an example outcome: Say it takes 12 hours to restore the client’s VM’s, they turn on, but the main application does not work properly. After spending a few hours investigating we find that a dependency, maybe a DNS server, is not in the customer’s backups (maybe it was running on an onsite router), which is causing the application not to run. It takes another few hours to set up a DNS server and re-populate the entries with the needed settings for the application to run. We are now at 20 hours. We got the main application to run, but a secondary application is still not running. We spend more time to figure out why that application is not running. We finally get that application running. Then we find there is a web server that needs to be accessed from the public side. We spend time on the firewall, adding the necessary public IP’s, NAT rules, and firewall exceptions. Ok, most core applications are now running and we have been working non-stop for 30 hours. So, how are users going to access this environment? Let’s try a client to site VPN. This results in very poor performance as users wait for their applications to download over a relatively slow link. Users are upset because it takes forever to do anything. Maybe client VPN is not the best solution, but the only thing we can quickly deploy. Maybe we can manually set up a terminal server to help, then instruct users on how to access the terminal server? Then we need to install the applications to the terminal server… How is the boss going to react to getting a bill for 30+ hours at a time and a half (because of course the disaster hit on a Friday and we had to work all weekend)? The boss gets a significant bill for something that only halfway works for their users, will they gladly pay it? Of course, some simple environments may just work great on the first try, but more commonly doing DR testing during an actual DR event is NOT recommended for the above reasons. It leads to disappointment, frustration and unexpectedly high costs. Does it ever make sense to test DR during an actual DR event? Sure. It makes a lot of sense if you are willing to live with the risks and pay for it no matter the result because the alternative is far worse. Just have expectations set properly! It is for these reasons we encourage clients to perform at least annual DR tests. These DR tests can be planned for a convenient time and typically do not require working after-hours or the weekends. When there are significant issues encountered it is good to re-test until the issues are worked out and a higher confidence level is achieved. It also allows testing of user access to the DR environment to ensure feasibility. How Can We Help? At Managecast, we fully manage and monitor your backups so that you can focus on more strategic initiatives. Interested in learning how Managecast can help your business with its cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions? Fill out this form for more information!

General Cloud Backup

The Neglected Art of Data Protection

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By Nathan Golden, Cloud Backup Guy Being in business for 20 years, and in the IT industry for 30, it is clear to me the art of data protection is sorely neglected in the majority of organizations from large to small. A report by US cyber-security firm Recorded Future published in May highlighted a spike in ransomware attacks targeting US cities. Previous victims include Lynn, Massachusetts, Riviera City, Florida, and Baltimore, Maryland, just to name a few. The fact these organizations were crippled by Ransomware or forced to pay a ransom, shows data protection was obviously lacking. Backup and recovery are the last line of defense against ransomware and other disasters. Why does this happen so frequently when the repercussions are so profound? Here are a few simple reasons: IT admins are not focused on data protection – they have many other jobs to do and backup is easily neglected. IT admins are not well trained or certified in data protection. Often the most junior employee manages the backups – because no one else wants to do it. Staff turn-over often impacts the monitoring and management of backups. Top management does not put emphasis on data protection or recovery testing. I often ask management this question: If you had to choose between all of the money the company has in the bank or all of your data, which would you choose if you could only keep one? Maybe in some cases, it would make sense to keep all of the money, but in most cases, data is what allows the business to stay running and to keep making money for years to come. So the questions boils down to would you want to keep the money you have now, or keep the money you will be making over the next 5, 10, or 20+ years? This question allows management to see data as being even more critical than the money in the bank, yet their safeguards for data protection are also far less than how money is protected. Getting top management to appreciate and demand comprehensive and professionally managed data protection is key. Without buy-in from management the appropriate funding levels will most likely never be met, nor will it be communicated as a priority to IT staff that data protection is a highly valued objective. Management can demand that certain controls are followed and reported. IT staff needs training, and have the time to focus on data protection even when other high priority IT initiatives invariably arise that often distract IT admins, from the daily grind of verifying and testing backups. IT staff needs to be redundant with others trained and experienced so that when someone takes a vacation, or takes another job, the data protection system is not neglected. Once management realizes more emphasis and resources are needed then the question becomes how to balance the additional resources to meet the objectives. Do you train your existing staff? Do you hire additional staff? Do you bring in outside assistance? Do you outsource the management of your backups to professionals? Consider the following: Backups will not increase revenues Backups will not increase market share Backups will not increase brand recognition Backups will not improve customer satisfaction In short, backups are not “strategic” to the business even if highly critical. Lack of backups (and the ability to restore data) can certainly lead to shrinking or even destruction of the company, but they do little to help an organization grow. IT people should be focused on technology which does add value to the organization. IT people should be dedicated to strategic tasks enabling the organization to be more competitive, more profitable, and increase customer satisfaction. So, does it make sense for IT staff to spend effort on data protection, or would this key function be better addressed by engaging outside resources with more focus and expertise? Managecast’s goal is to provide expert-level backup and recovery service that improves current data protection methods while freeing existing IT support staff to focus on being more strategic to their organization.

General Cloud Backup, Veeam

Veeam, Cloud Backup and the Insanity of Periodic Full Backups

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I have been seeing a lot of attention being given to very low cost storage providers like Wasabi, Backblaze, and also public storage providers such as AWS to point Veeam offsite backups. Never do I see mentioned that these solutions require a periodic full backup to be performed over the internet. Think about that for a second. A cloud backup solution that requires you to perform full backups regularly? That is, quite frankly, INSANE! Organizations are creating ever more data, but the hours in the day remain fixed. Even 10 years ago, industry analysts like Forrester Research was advising clients to avoid backup products that require full backups (see report here), and instead recommended “incremental-forever” backup technology – and that was almost 10 years ago! Full backups across the internet might be just fine if you are a small business with a few hundred gigabytes of data, but even modest size companies are going to find it difficult to efficiently backup even a few terabytes of data on a regular basis. Veeam best practices say you should not have an incremental chain of backups over 30 incrementals long. This could be 30 days of backups if making a backup once per day. So that means at minimum, a full backup should be made once every 30 days – and even at that, a worse case scenario would be the loss of 29 days of backups if the incremental chain is corrupted. If you’re making a backup every 4 hours, then a full backup should be performed every 5 days. Full backups over the internet are problematic because they can take days to run and consume large amounts of bandwidth. Companies often pay to increase their internet bandwidth to help resolve the issue, which takes away the cost effectiveness of the low cost storage solutions! As data volumes increase, the bandwidth will also need to be increased. Moreover, while the full backup is completing, then no other offsite backups are occurring. So if it takes 3 or 4 days to perform a full backup that means you are going 3 or 4 days without an offsite backup. To solve this issue you need to run compute on the cloud side to enable “synthetic full backups”, which is a process by which Veeam re-builds the full backup on the cloud side without having to perform an actual full backup. In this configuration you can enable a true “incremental-forever” backup method that will not require periodic full backups to be made after the first full.  This can be achieved in AWS and Azure where compute resources, such as a Windows server, can be used to process the synthetic full, but then there is the added cost of compute resources and the client has another server to update, monitor, and manage, increasing costs. Low cost storage providers such as Wasabi and Back Blaze, offer no computing resources so there is no option for this on their platforms.  You might be saving in storage costs, but also experiencing other costs such as increased bandwidth requirements and delaying additional offsite backups from occurring. Veeam Cloud Connect Service Providers eliminate many of these issues as these are specialized services focused on Veeam cloud backups. The service provider performs the synthetic full backup on their side, which avoids periodic full backups over the internet. Additionally, a Veeam Cloud Connect Service provider will also have the Veeam expertise and generally better service level agreements around backup and DR services. Summary:  By leveraging a Veeam Cloud Connect Service provider you get true incremental-forever backups, minimize bandwidth usage, and get better service levels. Interested in learning how Managecast can help your business with its cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions? Fill out this form for more information!

Veeam

What is Veeam?

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I’ve Heard Of Veeam, But What Is It? You may have heard of Veeam and have a vague idea of what it does. Veeam is a software company that was founded in 2006 with a great growth story. In 2008, with 10 employees, it released Veeam Backup and Replication – a software application to backup and copy virtual machines on VMware’s increasingly popular virtualization platform. Today, as of 2018, it has 2000 employees and revenue of nearly a billion dollars. The name Veeam has become ubiquitous with easy and reliable VM backup and restore and is widely deployed in companies of all sizes. It has also extended it’s backup capabilities to Microsoft Hyper-V as well as to physical Windows and Linux servers. It has extended into the cloud with Backup for Office 365.  Thousands of companies around the world trust their data protection to the simplicity and affordability of Veeam software. Backup and Replication – What’s the Difference? Backup and Replication, the flag ship product, can be thought of as two functions. “Backup” is one function, related, but separate from “replication”. Backup is what you might think in that Veeam offers backup capabilities, including the ability to see your data back in time weeks, months, years. However, from a disaster recovery perspective, you need to restore data and be back up and running as quickly as possible and you are most concerned with restoring the most recent data. Unfortunately, the restore process from backups can take many hours to days to restore the data based on how quickly the data can be “restored”. For this reason, using backup for disaster recovery is not ideal. Replication solves the recovery time problem by keeping your most recent data copied to another location that is ready to be “turned on”. For example, you can have a file server at location A that is fully copied  to location B. If location A becomes unavailable you just need to “turn on” the server at location B and it’s current as of the last replication.  No restore process was needed and recovery can usually be measured in minutes. Regular replications are added to the target in a way that never requires a full restore. By avoiding a restore process the replicated server is available quickly. Other Notable Things About Veeam • Its monitoring and management software Veeam Monitor and Veeam Reporter was combined and renamed as Veeam ONE and was first released in 2010. • It developed and released the free VM copy tool call WinSCP in 2007 and was a precursor to Backup and Replication software. • In 2014, it started the VeeamON annual conference for all things Veeam. • In 2016, it made it into the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup. • 2016 also marked the year in which Vit delivered backup for Office 365. Want to Know More? Managecast has been in business for 19 years and has been a long-time Veeam partner for more than 10 years.  We welcome the opportunity to speak with you about Veeam and what it can do for you. We can set you up with free trial licenses, including Veeam Cloud Connect for easy offsite backups.  Feel free to call us at 513-735-6868, Option 2. Or visit us here.

DRaaS, General Cloud Backup

Backup VS Disaster Recovery (DR)

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Several years ago your main, and usually only option for disaster recovery was to take backup media and perform a restore onto new hardware. This means copying a large amount of data from backup media back to a server. We call this “Backup Recovery” or “Standard Recovery”.  It’s the process most people are used to and the standard method for decades. As data volumes have exponentially expanded, combined with an “always on” culture of today’s society, the old means of recovery are no longer adequate for a lot of businesses. Disaster Recovery  Unfortunately it is sometimes at the worst time, during an actual disaster event, that it is fully realized the current backup solution is no longer meeting the disaster recovery requirements of the business. When management realizes it takes 48 hours to just restore (copy) the data is when the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is more clearly appreciated! Many times after these events companies update their RTO policies and implement changes. Obviously it would be better to consider this situation and enact changes prior to the disaster. For organizations that need quicker recovery time, the option is to implement some form of “replication” in which all of the production data is replicated to another system for DR purposes. The replication could be local, and/or could be offsite to a service provider. The key to replication is that you are keeping a copy of your entire server in another place so that if your primary server is compromised in some way, you can “turn on” the DR server and be back up and running within minutes, current as of the last backup.  This typically allows the organization to resume operations much more quickly since the data did not need to be restored, but rather was already in a state to be used almost immediately. Replication is really the only way to minimize the recovery time since it eliminates the restore process. Backup On the other hand, backup still serves a valuable service that is not well addressed by disaster recovery (replication).  In a disaster situation you are typically most interested in the most recent version of data and not the data from months or years ago. Organizations with retention policies may want months, or even years of past versions of backup data. DR does not address this need, however, backup is used for retrieving data that may have changed in the past. For instance, a user may delete a file, but not notice for months. Backup would be used instead of DR for this older data since DR is focused around the most recent version of data. Typically no one wants to do a disaster recovery with 6 month old data! Backup is also usually much easier to use for granular restores of a few files or directories. DR is focused around an all or nothing approach. In a DR situation you are typically restoring entire servers. Backup makes a granular recovery easier. For this reason, backup is typically more often utilized than DR. So Which One Do You Need? There is often the need for both backup and DR solutions to address both needs. VEEAM Backup and Replication, for instance, gives you the capability of choosing Backup or Replication (DR), or you can elect to do both.  If you can not afford to do both then you will need to contrast the pros and cons of backup and DR and decide on which one best meets your requirements. For example, if you need quick recovery, but do not need long-term retention, it may be possible to use DR as a form of backup. On the other hand, if you do not require quick recovery, but need long-term retention then backup-only may be best.  However, if you need both quick recovery and long-term retention then you need both backup AND Disaster Recovery. The table below contrasts some of the differences between Backup and Disaster Recovery. Interested in learning how Managecast can help your business with its cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions? Fill out this form for more information!

DRaaS, General Cloud Backup, Veeam, Zerto

What is Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)?

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Until recently, implementing quick fail-over to a remote site came with significant costs, complexity, and time commitments—making it accessible only to large companies with deep pockets. However, advancements in technology and the internet have made Disaster Recovery (DR) more affordable for businesses of all sizes. Today’s consumers expect uninterrupted service, driving companies to seek out DR fail-over solutions to avoid business disruptions. What is DRaaS? Hosting a disaster recovery site on your own can be cost-prohibitive, both in terms of money and resources. The costs of maintaining a remote site, managing servers, applications, backups, replication, and performing regular tests can add up quickly. This is where Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) comes in. DRaaS allows organizations to leverage service providers like Managecast to protect virtual servers in a cloud environment. Service providers offer the infrastructure, software, and management needed for DR solutions—helping businesses reduce costs and complexity. Failover: How It Works With DRaaS, organizations replicate their data either continuously or periodically, depending on their Recovery Point Objective (RPO), to the service provider. In the event of a disaster, businesses can fail-over all or part of their environment by powering on their virtual machines (VMs) in the service provider’s cloud infrastructure, ensuring continued operations. Organizations can access failed-over replicas through predefined methods: Once local infrastructure is restored, fail-back is possible. This involves replicating any changes made in the DR environment back to the production environment. DR Testing Regular DR testing is essential to ensure the failover process runs smoothly during an actual disaster. Most DRaaS providers allow businesses to perform their own tests. Testing can be as simple as logging into the service provider’s web console, powering on a VM, and verifying application or service functionality. Cost Structure The pricing model for DRaaS varies among providers, but a common model is usage-based billing—charging businesses only for the resources they use during a failover event. Management and Support In addition to offering the infrastructure, many DRaaS providers offer extra management services. These can include: While disaster recovery may seem like an additional cost for organizations, for DRaaS providers, backup and replication are their primary focus. By using a service provider for DRaaS, businesses gain access to expert management and support for their DR needs. In Conclusion:DRaaS has transformed disaster recovery by making it accessible and affordable for businesses of all sizes. By utilizing a service provider, companies can safeguard their operations without the massive expenses and complexity that traditionally came with DR solutions.

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    West Chester, OH 45069
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