The Cloud

Backups & Storage – what does it all mean?

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And more importantly, why is it so important to you?

Read any article about computers, or have any discussion with anyone involved with computers and you will come across a variety of terms relating to storage & backup. These will include, backup, storage, data synchronisation, NAS (or Network Attached Storage), USB/Firewire Storage and cloud storage.

All of these relate to where you keep copies of your data, or more simply your files such as text documents and spreadsheets, databases, email, contacts, pictures, music, etc. Basically, anything that is on your computer that is important to you.

For now, don’t get tied up in what constitutes your data, in this article we are going to concentrate on what you do with it.

First some definitions (according to Keith):

Data – all of the files, databases, email, photos, music etc that are stored on your computer and are important to you for any number of reasons.

Data Storage – hard disks, CDs/DVDs, thumb drives, NAS, etc that contain your data. These can be in your computer, attached to your computer or on your network (e.g. Network Attached Storage or NAS for short).

Data Sychronisation – the process of ensuring that ‘live’ copies of data stored on various PCs, on external devices or in the cloud are identical. Often used when you have a desktop & a laptop. (Note ‘live’ = data you are currently working on, today, tomorrow or whatever).

Data Backups – secure & safe snapshots of your data stored in a safe place, preferably off-site. These are used to recover your data in case of emergencies

The Cloud – for all intense and purposes, the Internet.

Cloud Storage – storage for your data in “the cloud”.

Cloud Backup – a backup system for your data in “the cloud”.

Archiving – The removal of “old” (i.e. not ‘live’) data from storage (see above) to a safe place such as a fire proof safe. Examples of this may be data related to a completed project. You may require access to the data at a later date for various reasons such as compliance regulations. Archiving can be used to recover storage space or just to tidy up your storage (it can be tricky sorting through a thousand projects looking for a specific one).

OK, now we’ve got that out of the way, lets get started. [Read more…]

Online Data Backup

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In an earlier post, “Online data Storage“, I tried to explain the difference between  Online Data Storage and Online Data Backup. I don’t think I did a particular job of it so I will try again here. I now have a much better understanding of the two so this attempt should be better!

Online Data Backup (ODB) involves creating a copy of your critical data on a server somewhere out there in “The Cloud”. The Cloud being the Internet (at least that is how I think of it). This copy of your data remains out there on someones secure servers until you remove it. You do not use this data in the day to day running of your business, it is there purely as an insurance policy against loss or corruption of the local data on your computer. [Read more…]

Smartphone security and data backup

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With the continuing fall-out from the “News of the World” phone tapping scandal now is probably a good time to talk about security for your smartphone. If you have an iPhone, Nokia or HTC or any one of the other smartphones you should be treating access to this and it’s stored data the same as you would any computers you may own; in fact; taking into account the portability and size of your smartphone, you should be taking this security even more seriously!

Security on your smartphone goes far beyond having a PIN to access the phone, you need the equivalent of PC anti-virus & firewall software at least. And don’t forget about backing up the data on the phone!htc

There are numerous ways that “bad” people can access your phone. Obviously having physical access to it is one way and you may think that a PIN or password will fix this but remember passwords can be cracked. Also, don’t forget the media or memory card inserted into the little slot in the side or back that contains images, videos and other information. Of course your phone can also be remotely “hacked” as in the News of the World story where journalists were able to access a phone remotely and read the messages, etc stored on it.

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The Cloud

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A while ago I talked about Online Data Storage (ODS) and referred to Online Data Backup (ODB). In the time since that post I have been testing offerings of both and have a much better understanding of how they work and what benefits they can offer us. But before I get into that I need to explain “The Cloud”.

Firstly a quick explanation and a bit of terminology (sorry about the jargon but you only need a basic understanding of this). You will be hearing a lot more references in the future to something called “The Cloud”. Briefly, The Cloud has been around for a long time and refers to services offered online (on the Internet). In fact if you have been using Microsoft Exchange services online then you have been using The Cloud. These services include data storage & backup and also software applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, email, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and even accounting. The provision of online software services is known as Software as a Service, or SaaS. You can even rent hardware services (Windows servers, etc).

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Online Data Storage

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I had an interesting discussion with a client today about computers, data storage and applications . It started as a discussion about online storage and backups and the idea of the “cloud” then moved on to online applications and moving entirely to the cloud. I won’t go into what the cloud is in this post, I’ll save that for later, but for now just think of it as “the internet”.

For a few weeks now I have been testing an offering called “Dropbox” which is an online storage system. I moved all of my business data to Dropbox so it is no longer stored on my desktop PC but is stored in the “cloud”. Dropbox offers 2GB of free storage for your data and offers plans for those with the need for more.
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