Should You Back Up Your Data in Microsoft Office 365?
Should You Back Up Your Data in Microsoft Office 365? In one word? “Maybe” It is a business decision that may depend on a diverse set of factors including: What are your business objectives, requirements, policies, etc? How do your retention policies align with your objectives? Do you have to backup for auditing purposes? If […]
Azure Backup Server Installation
Azure Backup Server Installation The final two deployment options for Azure Backup are System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) and Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS). Since both are very similar this article will review how to deploy MABS. Except for the small monthly Azure costs, MABS is completely free. Customers do not need any System Center or SQL […]
Getting Started with Azure Storage
Getting Started with Azure Storage Microsoft Azure Storage is a cloud-based storage solution that provides easy access and secure, high availability for all storage needs. Azure Storage has many different options to configure based on the type of storage that is required. This can provide a great alternative for tasks like backups or file shares and may even be able to […]
Azure Pricing
Azure Pricing In our last article we discussed the four (4) different ways to use Microsoft’s Azure Backup services. With Azure Backup, regardless of the way you deploy, the cost of Azure Backup is the same. You pay per protected instance and storage consumption. For storage, Azure Backup uses Block Blob storage and you can choose […]
Four Primary Ways to Use Azure Backup
Four Primary Ways to Use Azure Backup Azure Backup is the Microsoft’s cloud-based service you can use to back up and restore your data in Microsoft Azure. Azure Backup can replace your existing backup solution with a pure cloud-based solution that is reliable, secure, and competitive in cost and functionality to all major enterprise backup solutions. Azure Backup […]
How to Create Data Loss Prevention Custom SITs
How to Create Data Loss Prevention Custom SITs Data loss prevention (DLP) is a strategy for making sure that end users do not send sensitive or critical information outside the corporate network, accidentally or intentionally. Adoption of DLP is being driven by insider threats and by more rigorous state privacy laws, many of which have […]
eGroup + Zerto + Azure = IT Resilience
In last Friday’s post, I discussed the concept that “Things that have never happened before, happen every day” and the need for a posture of resilience to remain operationally ready for anything. Storage industry veteran Paul Zeiter, currently president at Zerto, said recently that “One of the big challenges facing companies today is the need to […]
Availability = Survival
As IT veterans, I’m certain we all have stories like the one I shared previously – many of those without the happy ending. It reminds me of the prime concepts of a (fascinating) survival book I read several years ago by Laurence Gonzales called “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why,” where the key themes of […]
The Case for Preparedness
Are you prepared? Are you sure? In the early minutes of Saturday morning, April 2011, a water main broke underneath the street in Columbia, SC. A $30B lending provider, located just feet away from the break, with over 1,200 servers (95% of them virtualized) located in their basement Data Center, experienced a massive subterranean flood […]
Protect Azure Resources from Accidental Changes and Deletion
A topic that comes up often in conversations about the Cloud is “How do I protect Virtual Machines and other Cloud resources from accidental deletion?”. Microsoft Azure provides a simple and effective way for Administrators to do this through “Locks”. When combined with other administration best practices, like backups, Locks allows administrators to ensure resources […]
