FAQ - General Information
Why Smotis, Inc and PDXVault? What are your biggest strengths?
We always develop a face-to-face partnership with our customers.
Our services are AUGMENTED by an online/remote presence, but that will
never replace our willingness to sit in the trenches with you at your
site. With the exception of special circumstances, our support and
sales staff will always be located within a 1 hour drive of your place
of business so that when the need arises to have a someone you can
shake hands with, we're minutes away. No support centers located in
India, China, or Korea. Our employees are 100% located in or near the
markets we sell to.
We pride ourselves on dedication to security
and because of this, we are a little more restrictive in how we grant
access to our backup network for our clients then our competitors are.
Almost every single service in the Remote Backups space offers "access
to your files from anywhere on the Internet." Do you really want this?
Do you want someone on a public network stealing your login/access
data? Do you even understand the risks of accessing your data from a
shared computer and/or network? Sure, it's great that you can get
access to some low-security file from the library or Starbucks, but if
your username/password are compromised, how will you know? How will you
ever be able to trust that your financial data has not been left out in
the open? Your client data? Patient data?
So how do we protect
against this? Virtual Private Networking. (VPN) On top of the encrypted
tunnel (VPN), encrypted web server (SSL), and username/password
protection....it's a PRIVATE NETWORK that only computers authorized by
our technical staff have access to. We can identify every single
computer on the network and monitor exactly what it is doing. Nobody
can connect without multiple levels of security being compromised and
even then they would have restricted access to very little. (nothing
without username/password) We use encryption within encryption on the
VPN, so packet sniffers and similar tools will have little value. So
what if an authorized laptop/computer is stolen? 1) It would only be
able to see what we have configured it to see (the backup server) and
2) with a quick phone call to our support staff, we can remove access
to the VPN in a matter of seconds for that computer.
What's the
trade off for the higher security? Basically a slight performance hit
(2%-5%) and more complicated setup, which is why we do not offer a
software package our customers can install for themselves. We take
security seriously and at this point in time that would present a
serious security flaw to the system.
There are no hidden costs
within our system. If you look at some of the main players in the
market, they have simplified what you buy to something like "$25 per
Gig of data", which looks great from a simple perspective, but does
nothing for your pocket book. For many small businesses, this can be
the difference between affording a service and not. Because of this, we
made the choice to break out our pricing to more of a menu type system
with you having the ability to choose what you want/need. There are
many "bells and whistles" which simply are not needed for most
situations and our sales staff will never try to force something on
you. In the same light, they will not deny you. They will explain to
you what the features are and allow you to choose for yourself.
Obviously, there are some bare minimums....the base monthly disk space
and setup fees. It's up to you how much support services you want and
what you are willing to pay for it. Considering how simple our tools
are to use, most people won't need/want much beyond the basics. For
those of you needing more, we ARE a full service IT support company
with Professional Services available in pretty much every discipline
you can name.
What is a "Remote Backup"? Why would I do it?
In it's simplest form, a remote backup is the result of copying data
from "point A" to "point B" at a different physical location. Most
small businesses are restricted in this because they only have 1 site,
do not have the technical know-how, and/or it can be extremely
expensive to implement and manage.
By automating the process of moving this business critical data to an off-site location, we are solving a number of problems
- Automated daily backups with minimal human involvement.
- Off-siting the data for Disaster Recovery purposes.
- Maintaining an easy to use archive for however long the customer needs.
- Meeting regulatory requirements such as HIPAA and SOX
What does 98% or 99.5% or 99.999% uptime mean?
Boiling it down, when a Vendor gives you one of these numbers it basically is what they think their statistical probability of having the system available to you at any point in time is. Yeah. What does THAT mean?
What constitutes downtime or not "uptime"? If the service is
unavailable, then it's down. That simple. System maintenance, softare
installations, hardware failures, connectivity issues. These are all
things which can mean downtime.
A system-architect has the job of designing the best system possible. This applies to every job field, not just technology. With technology, it's typically a little easier to measure. For example, if I have 1 server with 1 hard drive that I backup your data onto, I'll have a certain percentage of "uptime" I can promise you. If I'm crazy, I might say 98% or 99% with that type of configuration. In a given month or year, I might even be right. More realistically though, that number is probably more like 92-98%.
So, a basic server (like described above) might get me 96% uptime if I'm lucky. How do I improve that? For starters, you add a 2nd hard drive and "mirror" the two drives together. A hard drive is one of the most common hardware failures in a system because it has moving parts which can take a beating with all that work. Adding a mirror, probably puts you into the 98% range of uptime, which equates to about 7.3 days of downtime in a year. Since a chunk of that time will be system maintenance or upgrades, it's not too bad for most situations. (probably 4-6 of those days are during "non-business hours")
What do you strive for at PDXVault? Our goal is 99.9% or better uptime for our services. No more then 8 hours of unavailability per year. This does not mean a given server will have 99.9% uptime, though we do attempt this. 98% is more likely. We attain these numbers through features like redundant servers in separate physical locations. This model is an extremely cost-effective way to get extra protection.
"So and so" promises "100% availability to your data", why don't you? Basically because that is an impossible promise and you aren't seeing the fine print. Somebody in the marketing department put 100% in big bold letters on the marketing material so that customers would think that is what they are getting. I can GUARANTEE that if you have a conversation with one of their architects, there will be plenty of back-stepping and "coughing" about those numbers. Our architects have designed systems with some of the HIGHEST UPTIME REQUIREMENTS in the world and they will tell you those systems could attain 99.999% (often referred to as "5 9s") at best. The Stock Exchange, Medical Systems, Emergency Services. If THEY can't achieve 100%, how do you think a "backup service provider" can?
As a rule of thumb, add a factor of 10 to your costs for each additional 9 you want. 99.9% costs about 10 times as much to implement as 99%.
What are 'online' or 'remote' backups?
A Remote Backup copying your critical data to a remote location so that you are
protected in the event of a total catastrophe to your local system. It is type of backup historically used for 'disaster protection', but due to technical costs dropping significantly over the last few years it has become more common place as a regular part of daily backups. This is because costs have finally reached a point that it makes sense. Why have 2 backups systems (a local backup process and a different method to get data to another site) if 1 can solve both problems cost-effectively? A well-designed automated eletronic backups system offers you much higher levels of protection then a local, human managed system ever will.
Why are off-site backups important?
Off-site backups give you a level of protection local backups simply can't. Physical harm to the location of your backup server (or where you store your 'tapes') could mean all of your backups are useless. If this is the same location as your primary data, then you have probably just completely lost all of your data.
How do I calculate the costs of lost data?
This is a difficult question to answer and you are likely to get a different answer no matter who you ask. We tend to take a slightly more 'real' approach to it then some, which in the world of small business, makes sense. The 'what' of calculating the cost of data loss is going to be different for every company, but in general terms you want to look at things like:
- Man-hours lost (employees can't get anything done)
- Technical Recovery costs (contractors, new hardware)
- Data re-entry costs for any lost data
Keep in mind that this is only a PORTION of your potential costs from a disaster. It's critical to have a solid Disaster Recovery plan in place so that you do not have to "think" so much during/after an event. Everyone has assigned responsibilities that are well defined, with well documented processes. Data recovery is typically only a percentage of what has to be taken care of.
Do you provide off-hours support?
Our normal support hours (included with the basic cost) are 7AM to 7PM PST.
We DO have off-hour support on either a contract or per-incident basis. Please see your Account Executive for further details, as they can differ slightly based on which region you are located in.
Where are the PDXVault servers physically located?
The servers are located at various locations near our customer base. They are typically located at what would called a 'co-location' facility with limited physical access. Our current and immediate future server locations are as follows:
Portland, OR
Lake Oswego, OR
Roseburg, OR
Milwaukie, OR
Dallas, TX
Are the servers physically secure?
Yes. All servers are located in protected environments with limited physical access. Under normal circumstances, there is a trusted person at the facility for significant portions of the day.
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