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Friday the 13thPosted by Ben on 13th February 2009

If you’re wondering why I have labelled this post “Friday the 13th”, it’s because today actually is... Friday is the 13th (next month also happens to contain a Friday the 13th, but I’ll leave that one for another post).

Before we begin, let’s take a look at the superstition surrounding Friday the 13th. According to Wikipedia, it’s a 19th century concept and it appears that there are many myths surround the origin of the idea that ‘bad things happen on a Friday’ – especially if one of those Friday’s is dated the 13th, as the number 13 itself is often considered unlucky (there’s more than a fair share of skyscrapers, in Brisbane at least, without a 13th floor).

So what does all of this have to do with StorMan? Well, after reading about all the horrific events that have taken place in Victoria (bush fires) and of course the flooding in Northern Queensland (the worst in 30 years), it has been a pretty shocking week.

So that got me thinking... what would happen if your facility was burnt down by a bush fire, or flooded by water? If you’re not on-site to rescue your computer from melting in a fire, or gurgling amidst a plume of magical blue smoke as it drowns in several metres of water, do you have a Plan B? Where is your StorMan backup? On a CD in the cupboard, you say? What – the cupboard over there with the smoke coming out of it? Hrmm... see my point?

And while some of your customer units may also sustain fire damage, how are you going to know which customer’s to call if your computer is damaged and your StorMan backup CD is currently floating through a stormwater drain on its way to the ocean or if it’s become a molten glob of misaligned 0’s and 1’s.

 

Which brings me to the point of this post – while floodwaters subside and towns can be rebuilt, StorMan datafiles, like any other computer data, do not ‘grow back’ faster with a dashing of fertilizer and a spoonful of Ozmocote. In fact, they don’t grow back at all. Period. So stop and have a think for a minute... if I was to come into your facility and let a werewolf chew through your StorMan Server computer, could you re-open within an hour or two? If you have an off-site backup, the answer would be yes. If your backup was “on the D: drive”, then no – sorry... time to tell the boss you’ll be working late tonight, because you’ve got to re-enter the last “13” (see what I did there?) years worth of customer payments and facility data. Not a good option.

Eventually, you are going to need that data - even if it’s just for the purpose of finalising insurance claims, ATO records, etc. So how do you ensure that your data is safe even in the worst possible scenario – be it fire, floods, vandalism or the chewing of servers by werewolves? It’s easy – take your backup off site. Burn it to CD or dump it to a USB stick / thumb-drive and take it home – wedge it behind the cistern if you have to... just keep it away from the office. Put it in your vehicle’s glove box, in your daughter’s dollhouse or up in the attic. And don’t worry about security – the StorMan datafile is encrypted, and can only be opened with a copy of StorMan and not with other database software (nb. password-protect your datafile, because anyone’s copy of StorMan can open it).

 

What can you do about it? Easy. We offer ‘Internet backups’ (which are, in other words, ‘offsite backups’) for a small fee every month. This would alleviate any problems in the above scenarios (regardless of how ridiculous some of my examples may sound) and provide excellent redundancy should something like that happen. Customers running MultiView would also benefit from this service.

So to end my post today, I offer the following: for each new Australian facility signing-up for our Internet Backups service during the months of February and March (of 2009), StorMan Software Pty Ltd will donate the first months’ Internet Backup fees to the Australian Red Cross bushfire and flood appeals. Do something for yourself & the people affected by the fires in Victoria & the floods in North Queensland, and save your business data should a disaster come to a town near you.

Find out more here, place a purchase request via our Store, or contact your local sales office for more information. Thanks for reading.

 

Regards,
Ben (General Manager, StorMan Australia).