The Importance of Modern Data Backup and Recovery Solutions

THE CHALLENGE

Nonprofit Lacks Up-To-Date Technology and Process

A prominent nonprofit organization based in Washington DC was in the throes of preparing for their annual convention.

This event was the biggest source of revenue for the entire year, so it was incredibly important it went off without a hitch. As luck would have it, four days before the big event, one of their servers failed.

They were unable to access any of the data connected to the event, which meant that work ground to a halt. At the time, this non-profit organization did not have a Managed IT Services Provider on contract, and their small IT team was in panic mode.

THE SOLUTION

Migrating To New Cloud Data Back-Up Solutions

The good news was that the organization had a cloud-based data backup solution in place. The bad news was that it can take time – often days or weeks – to restore the data with file level backup, which is what they had in place.

Ntiva was called in to help, and immediately dispatched a system admin to the site. Due to the type of backup, the admin had to start from scratch to restore the server to working order. This meant procuring new hardware and then installing the operating system, applications, configuration, access permissions and more.

The Ntiva IT team ended up working almost 24 hours a day for two days straight to re-build the server.

Day three began with the tedious task of downloading individual files from the cloud backup and attempting to put them back where they belonged. Miraculously, all their data was recovered before the event, but it was a nail-biting exercise that could have been disaster.

Ntiva recommended they migrate from their outdated cloud backup solution, which only supported file backup, to more robust solution which supported image-based data backup. 

THE IMPACT

Learning The Importance of True Business Continuity Planning

Despite having a competent IT team on site, it's hard to keep up with continual changes in technology, especially with staff turnover. There is a big difference between file backup and image-based backup, but no one ever thought to question what was in place.

After the event, Ntiva was asked to provide IT consultation services to recommend and implement a data protection platform that didn't just "back-up" the data, but one that would allow for true business continuity should the worst occur.

This included documenting a business continuity plan that outlined the exact emergency response and recovery strategies that should be taken, an important part of a complete strategy.

Ntiva was also asked to assist the in-house IT team in co-managed IT model on a recurring basis, offloading the team of routine tasks that were preventing them from taking a step back and launching more strategic IT initiatives.