Like many other businesses we have a number of projects on our to-do list that will improve us as a business, and gradually we work our way through them.
Our most recent project was to update our internal Backup solution for our home office, the old one had reached end of life and no longer fit our requirements and like most of our projects it started with a whiteboard and a list of what we wanted to achieve.
Our Requirements:
- Store a local copy of Cloud data (Microsoft365)
- Ability to recover files further back than the standard 30 days on Microsoft365
- Backup local Windows and Macs data
- Ability to restore Windows as an image for quick recovery
- The device has to be small and have low power consumption
We deploy and manage a number of Backup solutions but one that we are a big fan of are Synology NAS devices. They are ideal for offices of all sizes, reasonably priced and come with a range of software bundled in the price that many large enterprises would be envious of.
We chose the Synology DS220+ which is the smallest member of the Synology family combined with 2*6TB drives mirrored meaning if one drive fails the device will still continue operating until the faulty drive is replaced (Backups are important!). This isn’t the most powerful device in the range but for a pure Backup solution it is more than capable. In a later post we’ll cover the other features as there a lots!
When we undertake an internal project like this we give the kids a chance to get involved, Faye (10) and Jason (6) were my volunteers for this one, Jason, who already has an interest in building computers, performed the steps of plugging in the hard drives, network and power cables while Faye setup our Microsoft 365 Backup. The biggest lesson they learned was the importance of having Backups, both in terms of protecting valuable data and documents but also the impact of the time to recover from a Windows/Mac failure and the time it takes to recover.
If this is something you’ve been putting off or not sure where to start then contact us to see how we can help, the kids are raring to go!
