GFS Rotation Overview We will use what is known as the Grandfather, Father, Son (GFS) tape rotation schedule to manage our backup tapes. GFS requires a total of 21 tapes for a year’s worth of backups:

With GFS, the Monday through Thursday tapes are used once per week, with each Monday’s backup overwriting the previous Monday’s data. This allows us to go back to how the data was on any day of the previous week. The Friday 1 through Friday 5 tapes are used once per month (The Friday 5 tape is not needed every month), allowing us to go back to how the data looked on any Friday evening of the past month. The Monthly 1 through Monthly 12 tapes are used once per year, allowing us to go back to how the data looked on the monthly backup day for any month up to a year.

Onsite/Offsite Storage The backup tapes should be stored offsite if possible, to prevent any mishap that may happen to the server room (fire, water, etc) from ruining the backup tapes as well.

Adjusting the Rotation for Tape Ware It would be simplest to mark the four daily, five weekly and twelve monthly tapes in advance and be set. However, if we do that, then in a year the daily tapes are each used 52 times, the weekly tapes are used approximately twelve times and the monthly tapes are used only once.

Tapes can suffer from excessive wear, reducing their reliability. In addition, it seems wasteful to use a brand new tape for a monthly backup (that will never be used again if you keep your monthly backups indefinitely). Therefore, I suggest rotating in a new daily tape each month and using the old daily tape as the monthly backup. Under this plan, each daily tape will be replaced every four months, so its usage will not be excessive. I have outlined the 2006 dates below.

2006 Monthly Tape Rotation

Use the first backup as the monthly backup and create a new tape to use the next backup sequence.

The date of these monthly backups should be as follows:

Fragmented hard drives kill the performance of even the newest computers. We are asked quite often why the computers at boot up / shut down are running so slow when they ran so fast when we just purchased them. The reason is this is that each time we add new programs, features, etc. the windows registery is modified.

Every time we turn the system on or shut it down, the operating system does a check to validate the windows registry for changes.

When people notice their computer's performance slowing, the most common reason is the hard disk. Your computer's hard disk is a non-removable area that holds all the information available from your computer. Over time, hard disks begin to lose their ability to store data efficiently.

The Windows operating system provides three great tools to help keep your hard drive humming smoothly. These tools are Disk Cleanup, Disk Defragmenter, and Check Disk. These tools can also be scheduled to run automatically. Contact us at 513 312- 8381 for more information about using these tools to optimize your PC.

Ideally, you should run these tools on the following schedule.

When you feel sick you see a doctor, when you see bugs running through your home you call the exterminator, and your computer is no exception. Within the past month or so there have been many new and very dangerous viruses. “Dangerous” you might think to be too strong of a word, but I assure you that it is appropriate. For most home users the data stored on their system is not to important, but for small and large businesses it could be a matter of staying in business.

So a virus like “Chernobyl—which formats the drive” would be detrimental to any business. For this there are ways to protect you and your business, first of which would be obtaining some form of Anti-virus software. There are many available, so make sure you purchase the one best suited for your business. Once the Anti-virus software is in place make sure to update it periodically to check any new viruses. Most of the best anti-virus software will have this ability built in and access by either modem direct-dial or internet. Of course these programs are not fool proof. Most virus creators are out to find ways around them, to them it is just a game.

So what else can you do? Simple, setup a backup program in your business. If anything goes wrong you would have a backup of the data lost, so you would lose some time but not your company. There are two types of backup, there is System backup and Data backup. System backup is when you make a copy of everything that is on the hard drive. Data backup is when you copy specific files because they are constantly being updated. System backups should be done once everything is loaded on a system, or make a new copy when new software is added. Data backups should be done daily Monday—Friday. The one thing you want to make sure is that you keep the system backup separated from the data backup. You don’t what to lose your system backup. The best way to do this is to keep them in separate tape storage containers and to clearly mark them.

Another way to help prevent data loss is to have UPS’s on your servers and data servers. The term UPS means Uninterruptible Power Supply. These can be fairly expensive but a life saver as well. They give you addition time to save your data and shut down the system properly in the case of a black out, plus most of them have built-in surge suppression to help prevent an electrical spike ruining your system. Sure I will admit black outs don’t happen very often, but are you willing to risk it happening while working on something for your #1 customer.

These are just a few items that businesses should be aware of. If you don’t have these items implemented in your business and would like to know more about them or how to implement them, we offer the services to help you in these situations. We will work with you to determine the best needs for your business, call us at 513 312-8381. Just remember “Data is a terrible thing to waste or more importantly lose.”

"Its like throwing money down the drain."