FAQ
Data Survival & Availability FAQ

 

The BOS - Backup prOxy Server

 


Why does Chief know better?!

Chief was among the first companies in the world offering Data Recovery services to computer systems as main activity branch, and even branded the term "Hatzalat Netunim", ('Data Recovery' in Hebrew)

Since 1986 Chief core staff restores data from hard drives affected by fire, dirt, water, malfunctioning, and logical ailments such as data erasing, virus infection, forensic cases, and more..

Life sciences' pathologists and forensic investigators are able to find out the time and reasons of death of living creatures, contributing to the the study and development of methods for disease prevention and cure.
At Chief's laboratories, we call our original field of expertise 'Computer World Pathology'. We possess the knowledge, insight and statistics from thousands of cases in which businesses lost their vital data, critical time, and huge sums of money were in stake or lost.


All type of media, all brands of software, any kind of hardware and every existing storage solution in the world is bound to reach our data recovery labs.

As technology gets increasingly sophisticated, storage solutions more intelligent, and users more aware of the importance of backup, less work should be expected at our recovery labs. Paradoxically, the data recovery laboratories are getting increasingly busier everyday...

Could it be that the higher complexity of modern solutions increases their risk of failure?


Why does people need Data Recovery?
Organizations around the world -and around the next corner!- continuously expend variable sums of money in storage and backup solutions (up to 9 digits figures!).
When a crisis involving data loss occurs, the obvious procedure is to restore the lost data from backup. At this point many organizations realize there is no available backup!
In such a case, Call Chief NOW at +972-8-9400070!

 

BOS was designed and built by Chief's experts - technicians and engineers- and is the practical expression of the wisdom of those who know best.

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What is a good backup?

The following are the basics for good backup and restoring:

  • Backup is not the main goal - restoring is.
  • Restoration is measured by speed and quality - The fastest possible and the closest to 100% of data retrieved.
  • Backup must be as similar as possible to the original files and data.
  • The backup process should be automatic and hands-free. The more the better.
  • Small time intervals between data backups minimize the data loss.
  • User's involvement in backup duties - care and responsibility - should be minimized to zero.
  • Backup processes should not delay nor interrupt the organization's operations and vice versa.
  • Having as many handy backed up files and data versions as possible is crucial for a fast restoring.
  • A wide-scale use of agents for a backup solution overloads the system, difficults the maintenance and consumes a significant amount of time in the restoring process.
  • Portable computers and desktops are usually ignored or not backed up at an appropriate frequency, although they hold precious information. Portable computers need to be backed up both when connected to the corporate network, and when they are not.
  • When restoring, a critical time consumer is the process of finding the right file or data. A good backup allows quick and easy finding.
  • Relying on tape media as the only or main backup method has been repeatedly proven to be unsafe.
  • According to definition, backup is keeping a copy of an object in a different place. That's it.

 

Simplicity is often the most sophisticated goal to achieve.

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What is the importance of the Time Line?
The most commonly used backup method still involves tape media solutions.
This method is time consuming, overloads the system and requires a backup window (a period of time during the day or night when the corporate network traffic slows down). Therefore, most backup procedures are scheduled to run during the nightly hours.

Now let's consider those frequent cases of data loss during the day, human errors (such as when someone hits 'Save' instead of 'Save as'), blue screens, system halts, accidental restarts, power breakdowns or any other crisis. During the whole workday, the only data available for restoration in the tape backup will be that which was present at the time the last backup procedure was performed... (remember!: during the former night).

When data loss strikes, the affected users will need to re-create all the work done during the time elapsed between the last backup and the data loss incident's minute. The completion of their work will thus suffer a considerable delay.


The following is a common scenario to demonstrate the importance of the time line:

 

  • Backup is performed at 22:00.
  • The user Mr. Smith came to work the following morning.
  • At 9:00 he started to work on several documents for an important project.
  • This project must be e-mailed by 18:00 for a 100,000$ bid contract.
  • At 15:30 he discovers there are NO FILES! Whatever the reason is.
  • The system administrator rushes to restore the lost files.
  • About 30 minutes later the backed up files are found and restored.

 

But the project will not be ready on time, because:

 

  • The restored files are the yesterday evening's file versions.
  • Some of the files that were created this morning do not exist anymore.
  • Mr. Smith can not complete in only 2 hours all the changes and additions he made during his 6 hours of work.
  • Mr. Smith is too upset to think clearly.

 

The company will loose not only the working hours of Mr. Smith but also the 100,000$ contract.

 

If there had been a backup solution to keep the data updated at small time intervals, there would have been a good chance to go 1 hour, 30 minutes or even 1 minute back to the last files' version.

That could have saved the day...

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Which is the advantage of possessing handy backups?

Down time is the time between the moment when awareness of the need to restoring information comes up, and the completion of the restoring operation.
The faster the restoration , the shorter down time will be.

The following are the usual stages in a classical down time case:

  1. The user realizes there is a problem.
  2. The user asks his system administrator to restore the required data.
  3. The system administrator becomes available to perform the restoring process.
  4. The system administrator understands which data is needed to restore.
  5. The system administrator locates the needed data in the backup application database.
  6. The specifically required media (tape cartridge, optical archive media, etc.) is found.
  7. The restoring process starts.
  8. The user confirms or declines the receipt of the specifically requested data, which means that the restored data is correct or not.
  9. If the user declines, the system administrator will have to go back to stage 5.

One of the most time consuming steps above is finding the lost data.
It usually involves searching the backup application database and inserting one tape cartridge after another until the wanted data is found. This operation can take between 20 minutes to several DAYS.

Furthermore, since restoring operations are tiring, system administrators -who are always very busy- consider the restoring operation to be a nuisance and make their best to avoid them.

All this process can be reduced to only a few seconds by having as much backed up data as possible on fast-access media (one of the greatest virtues of BOS!)

 

When restoring is fast and easy

it might be even considered fun...

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Which is the best media for backup?

 After defining a good backup and restoration, and after explaining the way Chief Data Recovery laboratory experts see the ideal basis for a sound recovery, an important question remains to be answered: Which is the best reliable media able to ensure all the mentioned benefits?

The answer is: Hard Drives

Although hard drives are still the most common media from which the Data Recovery Laboratories are pooling data out, they still are the elective storage media for backup.

The following are the alternative existing storage media types presently in use worldwide.


 Advantages Disadvantages
Tape base Common, cheap, easy to use. Limited lifetime, limited capacity, low performance, off-site solution.
Floppy media
(Zip etc.)		 Easy to use, easy to assemble. Limited capacity, rare, medium performance, no standards off-site solution.
CD based
(CDR-W / DVD)		 Common, cheap
(CDR-W), easy to use, readable with no preparations,
fast data read.		 Expensive (DVD),
low capacity,
slow data writing,
hard to automate,
off-site solution.
Electronic storage Fast. Expensive, vaporizing,
no standard,
off-site solution.
Hard drives Common, fast read \ write, easy to use, cheap, no preparations needed, unlimited capacity, write verify automatically, easy to automate, long lifetime, easy to assemble.
Wise communications architecture can make them an excellent off-site solution.		 Hard to perform off-site solution

 

Furthermore, in a 98% of the cases, and unlike all other media, hard drives emit alerting signals before a malfunction happens.

From the media mentioned above, only hard drives possess the characteristics of the ideal backup media and comply with all the requirements for a good backup and restoring solution.

 

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What does BOS do?

BOS is a backup and restoring application installed on a dedicated server .
The BOS server is present in the network and accesses every object we want to backup, according to a pre-defined schedule.

The access-and-backup operation is performed in the simplest possible way: without any agents involved, without any special hardware required, and without any noticeable interruption to the system functions.

BOS uses the local hard drive as backup media.

 

BOS manages the backed up files and data in one single folder. This folder contains the network structure (machines), folders and files of each machine, each file's different versions, and also the BOS (patent pending) tiny and unique database.

 



 

BOS will keep filing older versions according to your settings (1 to 256 days).
The versions are true copies of the original files - which means the files are present on the hard disk and ready to restore in a blink!

You define:

  • the Session (WHAT to backup - the network paths: \\server1\c\...)
  • the Schedule (WHEN to backup)


and BOS is ready to work!

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Why is BOS a Set & Forget and Restore-Ready Machine?

  • Set & Forget Machine
    Right after initial installation, BOS is ready to work.
    There are no agents to install; neither restart nor other preparations on the target computers are needed.
    After setting the sessions, the user or the system administrator schedules them, and BOS starts to backup.]
    Even after a long power failure, the BOS server initializes itself, the BOS service starts without login dependency, and backups continue.
    Our experience shows that once you take BOS for granted, it will work uninterruptedly and unnoticed in the background for weeks, sometimes months or even years, until someone will need some data to be restored.

 

  • Restore Ready Machine
    Have you ever measured the TOTAL time it takes to complete an average operation with your present restoring solution ?.
    Using BOS , all your backups are at hand, and restoring is just a mouse click away!
    All files are present on the BOS server hard drive. They are a 1:1 copy of the original, without any compression, application enveloping or any other manipulations required to get the decompression of your files.
    Restoring a file or folder does not need any preparation as for instance searching a database, or putting several cassettes in a tape, rewind them, read catalog and so on...

 

With BOS, restoring is a completely new game:

  1. Browse BOS 'Restore' like you browse your network (e.g. machine, folder, file).
  2. Select the version you want to restore
  3. Click 'Restore'.
  4. Go back to work!

There is no other backup solution that can equal this lightning-fast restoring!

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What do I need to install BOS?

  • Before Installation

    BOS needs minimal preparations:
  1. One PC as the BOS server.
  2. MS-Windows™2000 \ XP as OS.
  3. A hard disk -as the backup storage media- of suitable capacity to you needs, including some spare capacity.
    BOS actually requires only one logical drive, therefore you can use dynamic volume set, RAID solutions, etc.
  4. Login account with at least READ rights for BOS to access the network and backup.
  • After Installation
    After BOS installation is completed, you owe a 100M freeware license.
    To reach the desired backup volume, run 'Utilities' -> 'Create registration request' and follow the instructions.

    On the 3rd form - 'Credit card details', fill up '111' on the 'Credit card number' and on the 'Name on card' fields, and click 'Save'.
    A pop-up message will inform you about the location of your request file (usually on 'C:\Program Files\BOS - Backup prOxy Server\Session\Request.bos').
    Kindly send this file to your dealer's email address or to Chief at sales@bos.co.il. When the purchase process is completed, you will be replied with a license key file.
    To activate this key, please click on the hawk icon ('About') -> 'Register', and open the key file.

 

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