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By Chris Angelini |
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Every computer that you sell, be it for business or personal use, will house important information. Budget data, product specifications, an entire Web site, and irreplaceable digital memories are equally important collections of zeroes and ones vulnerable to mechanical failure or accidental erasure. |
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Protecting those files isn't optional, even if your customers aren't aware that they're susceptible, and failing to pitch a robust backup solution does them a great disservice. Instead, earn your stripes as a true advisor and capitalize on a market that doesn't receive the attention it deserves. Information from Gartner shows that around 10% of PCs are lost or stolen. A survey conducted by Harris Interactive found that three out of five PC users have lost files they thought were properly saved and a mere 25 percent run frequent backups. Those are some startling numbers when you consider the value of what isn't being preserved. Clearly, the message here is that mechanical devices can and will fail. I can almost guarantee that small- and medium-sized businesses that don't religiously save precious data have never experienced data loss before, despite the statistics indicating most of us have suffered such a fate. There's an indescribable feeling of regret that strikes after a drive failure, which results in an eventual promise to never let such a gear-grinding wrench muck things up ever again. Your job is to reach the customer's who haven't yet fallen victim and are merrily plucking away with a false sense of invulnerability. The Many Faces of Backup Hardware Most solution providers heavily vested in backup advise formulating a plan of attack prior to recommending hardware. It's first important to identify your customer's needs. How many servers are involved in the strategy? How many workstations? Is there an infrastructure in place to get data from each system, and what sort of capacity will be needed to house the relevant information? With the pressing questions addressed, a VAR can go in and determine what type of hardware best suits the environment. Backup hardware takes many forms, from the 3.5" floppy you used to use for Quicken backups to networked storage arrays. At almost every level you'll find that there are powerful reasons why your customer should adopt an even more robust backup subsystem. Relying on floppy disks to save a megabyte at a time or, worse yet, spanning valuable financial data over a series of five is a recipe for tragedy. Cease and desist. Loose floppy disks pose a security risk, and they're notoriously unreliable. Spanning across a number of floppies only multiplies your likelihood of untimely heartburn. Consider this an introduction to popular alternatives: hard drives, tape, and NAS. External Hard Drives: Cheap, Reliable, and Everywhere Perhaps the most highly recommended package for entry-level customers exploring backup hardware for the first time is an external hard drive. Diverse in size and reasonable in cost, DAS (Direct Attached Storage) devices with USB 2.0 or Firewire interfaces are ideal for saving data on a single machine or a small workgroup. Rotated daily, it's easy to protect 300GB or more with relatively little investment and minimal effort. Maxtor's OneTouch II is a perfect example. Transferring at speeds up to 40 MBps, the OneTouch can make an incremental backup of three or four Windows XP workstations in under an hour. The bundled Retrospect Express HD utility recognizes versioned backups of saved files and allows a complete system restore to a healthy state, similar to the Windows Restore function. Western Digital's Dual-Option Media Center addresses the same market, as does Seagate's External Hard Drive.
Maxtor also sells a Small Business Edition of the OneTouch II specially designed to preserve Windows Server 2000 and 2003 machines, a function previously unsupported by the Retrospect Express software. A killer product for SMBs disinterested in a multi-drive RAID array, Maxtor's SBE is actually cheaper than the standalone Retrospect Small Business Server Premium software suite by itself. Of course, you get what you pay for, and while the SBE is great for comprehensive file backup, it isn't what you'd use to save Exchange stores or SQL databases. As you work your way up to larger customers with multiple workstations requiring regular backup, beefier hardware starts making more sense. Excel Meridian Data, Inc. (www.excelmeridiandata.com) sells a device called the TravelStor 8C with hot-swappable power supplies and hard drives. It accepts up to eight SATA 3 Gbps hard drives and connects directly to your customer's server through two Ultra320 SCSI host channels. The use of low-cost SATA drives helps keep costs down, while the high-performance interface maximizes performance. Best of all, support for RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 30, 50, and JBOD modes means you can customize for performance, reliability, and capacity. Pricing starts at $2,695 for the enclosure. But as drive prices fall, so too does the overall cost per megabyte of redundant storage. Iomega (www.iomega.com) offers a more specialized backup device called the REV, which we spent some time discussing in last month's issue. Each REV cartridge houses a 2.5" magnetic disc with 35GB of uncompressed space for $60. Naturally, such small repositories are no match for the capacity of an external disk drive, but the REV is more squarely aimed at the Travan and DDS-4 tape markets. Almost all comparisons clearly favor the REV. Data throughput is higher. File retrieval is also better, as is reliability. Iomega even bundles automatic backup software for scheduling regular save points. Tape: A Dying Breed
No matter how many other solutions you present, there will still be demand for tape, the incumbent technology known for its low cost and easy archival. Though it has most definitely fallen out of favor in my own my own consulting organization, DAS tape drives do manage to cover a broad array of performance and price points. DDS (Digital Data Storage) is one of the entry-level technologies with native capacities up to 36GB and transfer rates of 3 MBps. Travan drives are even more appealing, not because of their compressed capacities of 40GB or 4 MBps sustained speeds, but because you can snag a sizable internal IDE drive for less than $200. AIT-3 (Advanced Intelligent Tape), the latest generation of AIT, takes a step up by balancing a higher maximum capacity with transfer rates up to 12 MBps and an entry price approaching $2,000. Your customers will naturally still need to contend with switching cartridges, but a 100GB native capacity is much more flexible. Unfortunately, seek times approaching 30 seconds are hardly ideal for file retrieval. And that's just one reason why tape technologies are fading in the shadow of other backup solutions. Network Attached Storage: Accessibility For All In contrast, NAS (Network Attached Storage) is picking up steam at an incredible rate. NAS appliances exist independently on a network and provide storage space to workstation clients without monopolizing server processor resources. They're highly scalable, readily accessible, and much cheaper than burdening general purpose servers with file serving duties. Moreover, sharing is heterogeneous, so a design house with Macs and PCs doesn't have to worry about interoperability. When does it make sense to consider a network backup configuration, though? A solid NAS solution starts at about $2,000. The smallest businesses will push back on an expense like that. More likely is the slightly larger business with more than one server and a number of client machines. The network appliance pays for itself several times over versus DAS devices and IT staff inefficiency. Most management functions are accessible remotely, which works well for off-site consultants. Performance is scalable through Ethernet connectivity and drive technology, while reliability is improved through the common use of redundant power supplies and cooling. If NAS devices sound a lot like standalone servers, that's because they fundamentally are. Specialization helps keep costs down, though. Operating systems, management apps, and hardware subsystems all serve one purpose: enable centralized storage with streamlined management at a price SMBs can afford to pay. Buffalo Technology's (www.buffalotech.com) TeraStation NAS fits that description to a tee, wielding four 250GB drives flexible enough to support RAID 0, 1, or 5. It's incredibly reasonable at $1,000 so long as you remember it's an entry-level product without the hot-swap capabilities of more advanced boxes and incremental backup functionality needed to protect multiple machines during nightly transfers. The use of Gigabit Ethernet is a saving grace for improving the TeraStation's efficiency. Selling Backup For the most part, a compelling hardware backup solution is wholly capable of selling itself. The piece of mind tied to safeguarding data is usually enough to justify the purchase. It should be something customers seek out as a complete solution, not something you are forced to value-add at a discounted price. However, budget-oriented buyers exclusively concerned with the bottom line may require an extra nudge in the right direction.
The truth of the matter is that information on a failed hard drive isn't always lost. If the files are valuable enough, they can often be restored by a professional. A straight software recovery attempt might cost anywhere from $50 to $500, while a hardware repair might run up to $2,000 and impose downtime as the customer waits for the drive to be shipped back. As it stands, a majority of recovery jobs indeed require some sort of hardware replacement, according to ECO Data Recovery. Thus there's a good chance that a one-time recovery attempt will cost more than an investment in backup. Worse yet, there is no guarantee of a successful recovery. If that isn't enough to compel reluctant customers to immediately adopt a backup solution, it'll probably take a first-hand experience to drive the lesson home. Beyond the philanthropic reasons to keep your customers educated about backup, hardware manufacturers are piling on the incentives to motivate your bottom line as well. Maxtor, for example, recently announced improvements to its VIP Partner Program to include the OneTouch II Small Business Edition drive. Other benefits include the Test Drive program, whereby you have access to discounted demo hardware at 15 to 30 percent off list, the Rewards Program, which offers between $1 and $3 per unit sold, and a brand new online training course. An online promotional story offers a free monthly allotment of collateral material, while Maxtor's reseller site (maxtorbrand.com) delivers easy access to product information and art.
Iomega has its paws in external hard drives, high-capacity tape, optical storage, network attached storage, and even online automatic backup. The company's IoLink Reseller Program is one of the best out there, offering access to a 30-day product placement program (a try before you buy type deal), rebates that change on a quarterly basis, dedicated reseller tech support, training, promotions, marketing material, and custom email campaigns. If you quality for Authorized Reseller status with $50,000 per quarter in sales, you get a 3% up-front discount along with 24 x 7 support, qualified leads, and a dedicated sales rep. Between its strong VAR program and comprehensive product line, Iomega is an attractive play in the backup hardware market. Registered partners enjoy similar benefits by selling Buffalo Technology's NAS devices. Government and education orders are discounted through Tech Data, certain distributors offer further seed discounts, and NFR demo hardware is sold at up to 55% off MSRP. VARs get sales and marketing support directly through Buffalo, including a reseller hotline with pre- and post-sales support. In Retrospect Not only do backup solutions facilitate a tremendous opportunity to sell a lot of hardware, but they also show your customer that you're looking out for their best interests and truly performing the function of a VAR. Hardware is only one variable in a broader equation, though. RAID enclosures, NAS devices, and tape drives are all liabilities without the competent software needed to schedule, retrieve information, and manage incremental backups in an organized manner. They also require an educated customer capable of rotating drives, maintaining physical security of loose media, and proactively monitoring the health of backup subsystems. Next month we'll spend some time exploring the various software offerings you can use to add value in a backup environment. |
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