Storage Guardian Online Backup: Is a 30-Day Backup Retention Strategy Sufficient?

A major difference between consumer-grade and enterprise-grade online backup is how long data is retained. This is especially important when that data is an email. The latest online backup software from Storage Guardian can recover individual email messages from months or even years ago. Here’s how.

Toronto, Canada – January 29, 2010 – (PRWEB) – With fast internet connections now commonplace in homes and small businesses, many computer users are considering online backup solutions due to their ‘set it and forget it’ simplicity, and attractive pricing. These online backup services can backup documents, applications and even email messages every hour, providing a good safety net for the average user. However, these consumer-grade online backup services share a common attribute: the retention period is defined by the service provider, and is sometimes as little as 30 days. Is that enough? If you’re hoping to restore a crucial document or email message from 2009, you’re probably out of luck unless you’re also backing up to longer-term storage.

As we begin a new decade, Storage Guardian is offering free data retention policy consulting to small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) that are concerned about the robustness and longevity of their online data backups. The prevalence of email as the primary business communications medium is a top concern for owners and IT managers at these businesses. Often, important business decisions are conveyed via email. So, what happens if you need to produce that crucial email message as evidence in business or regulatory situations?

“Companies want to be nimble and agile, and so communications with employees, partners and customers is often via email. This means your email system should be your number one priority when it comes to document retention,” says Dave Minns, client services manager at Storage Guardian. “The most important consideration is the ability to quickly and reliably restore individual mailboxes and messages of current and former employees from prior months and years. Cost is clearly a factor here, so make sure that your online backup system lets you define a data retention policy that is tailored to you needs and budget. Whether it’s 30, 60 or 90 days – we put you in full control.”

Storage Guardian’s advanced features offer what many online backup services cannot: message-level restore. Storage Guardian’s highly granular approach means it can backup email systems such as Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, as well as Novell GroupWise and Lotus Notes. Along with the individual email messages, Storage Guardian also captures personal calendars and contacts. The software automatically handles Personal Storage Table (.PST) files — even if these files are open and locked (as is the case with any mailbox that’s in use). “Consumer-grade services will generally fail to back these up,” cautions Minns.

Storage Guardian is the leader for small-business online backup
With more than ten years of experience and thousands of satisfied customers, Storage Guardian’s remote data backup service has established itself as a dependable provider of enterprise-grade online backup technology for smaller companies. What sets it apart from the many low-cost alternatives in the market are online data backup features optimized for businesses that depend on Microsoft Small Business Server 2003/2008, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Novell GroupWise, and Lotus Notes. Features include:

• A cost-saving tiered-storage approach that includes: a) a local backup of first-generation data; b) a highly available second tier of online backup; c) a third tier of near-line backups of mature data (typically backups that have aged past 90 days).
• Convenience and flexibility are two crucial considerations when a major data restore is needed after a catastrophic server failure. Storage Guardian offers the ability to perform a ‘bare metal restore’ to a completely different computer.
• To save time for new customers, the initial backup is performed on a portable drive that is then shipped to Storage Guardian. Similarly, if a major restore of a large amount of data is needed, Storage Guardian can overnight a portable drive containing the data to be restored.
• Storage Guardian’s ultra-secure online backup technology uses AES 256-bit encryption plus hardware authentication. Information to be backed up is de-duplicated (deduped), compressed and encrypted before transmission to Storage Guardian’s SAS-70 compliant datacenter.
• Storage Guardian can also backup and restore individual mailboxes and contacts from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, as well as Novell GroupWise and Lotus Notes.

Useful links
Storage Guardian secure online backup: www.storageguardian.com
Storage Guardian blog: www.storageguardian.com/blog
Storage Guardian YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/storageguardian
Follow Storage Guardian on Twitter: @storageguardian

About Storage Guardian
Storage Guardian delivers business continuity protection and information lifecycle management. Storage Guardian is used by small and midsize businesses, enterprises, and multiple-platform LAN computing environments that want to safeguard their critical business data in a secure, off-site location. Its remote backup service is the culmination of a decade of intense research and software development and represents a superior alternative to tape-based data recovery systems. All Storage Guardian’s solutions are based on televaulting technology from Asigra, a recognized leader in enterprise online backup. The company is also developing a select network of authorized VARs to service the off-site backup and fast data recovery needs of companies located throughout North America. www.storageguardian.com.

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Agency Contact:
Tim Cox, ZingPR
For Storage Guardian
(650) 369-7784
tim@zingpr.com