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Smart business decisions often call for finding ways to cut costs. For the majority of companies looking at upgrading their network equipment, the most important thing about the design is that it delivers maximum benefit for minimum budget.

One area that is often looked at with regards to cost cutting is network hardware, such as routers and switches. There is seemingly a VERY wide price variation from one vendor to another and often we are faced with questions about why the most inexpensive products may not be a good fit for our clients' networks. Is there any valid reason behind the pricing disparity between vendors, or is it simply a matter of manufacturers trying to make more money?

As with most things you really do tend to get what you pay for. Yes the cheapest network switch or ADSL router may do the job - but does it do the job well and how long will it work for? Performance, data throughput and reliability are the most important aspects of network hardware.

Often it makes more sense to spend a few extra dollars and invest in equipment that will handle the throughput of a growing network, vastly improving performance and future proofing the overall design. Just because a switch can connect at gigabit speeds does not mean that it can keep up with constant gigabit traffic, especially on multiple ports at the same time. This is where the so called "backplane capacity" comes in to play and this is where the brand name, more expensive devices really shine.

The same goes for ADSL routers. Your company probably relies on its Internet connection more than you think. Could you afford for it to be unreliable? As with network switches, spending a few extra dollars on a higher quality, commercial grade router will often provide you with a far more reliable connection and a lot more features that you can use for setting up inter-site VPNs, 3G wireless backup connections etc; features that just aren't present on the standard modem routers that your Telco may provide you.

Correct Solutions believes in sourcing the best networking products available for your business whilst still maintaining good value for money. If you have concerns about your current network hardware or would like to discuss increasing the speed of your network traffic, call us for a chat!

There is a piece of software we have implemented at a number of our clients' sites that makes data protection really simple by performing automatic, scheduled backups of Windows Servers.

Wait; Microsoft's Server Operating Systems have inbuilt backup software, don't they??

Indeed! Introduced in 1997, NT Backup was built-in to the operating system and used to back up files. However, it has been discontinued and is no longer part of Windows Server (2008 onwards). Instead it's been replaced with a block-level backup system. Without getting too technical, let's just say this new type of backup system is aimed at making server backup and recovery really fast.

So why wouldn't you just use built-in systems to do backups?

There are limitations with the in-built backup (both NT Backup and the new block-level backup system) and we have found these are important to acknowledge. BackupAssist addresses all these limitations and the recent upgrade to Version 5 brings even further enhancements.

Firstly, with the discontinuation of NTBackup goes the support for tape drives. BackupAssist enables tape drive support for Server 2008, a very compelling fact for millions of tape drive users!

BackupAssist version 5 supports Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008. It also provides an image-based backup solution for these operating systems.

BackupAssist now gives the option for backing up via the Internet. It uses an efficient software application called Rsync that transmits files from one location to another while minimising data transfer. Rsync is clever in the way that it copies backup files - it only copies the data that has changed. Normally Rsync is configured via something called a command line, which even for techies can be a bit of a nightmare! BackupAssist allows us to set your backups via a user interface; no more command line!

Um, What exactly does that mean?

BackupAssist gives us a lot of flexibility to easily host your data, should you wish to have offsite backups:

• internally - at a different branch office, or to the boss' home for example
• externally - a third party data centre or a hosting partner
• on Windows or Linux machines
• to selected NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices

One of our favourite features in BackupAssist is the email notification of the backup's success/failure. In addition to this, version 5 now has an exciting new feature; Centralized Monitoring. This allows us to monitor your backup results from a central location (along with the results of our clients), or via an email report. It also allows us to look at data growth on your server. BackupAssist Centralized Monitoring can also produce easy to decipher PDF reports.

All of this enables us to:

• give you more options for how you want to backup your data
• be more proactive about backup failures and
• make sure you don't run out of space on your backup drives and tapes.

For more information about BackupAssist or to discuss your backup procedures in greater detail, please contact our office.