This document gives a brief summary of
the Backup Policies and Procedures of GATE
Villages’s Hosted
Services; that is, what we backup, how often, and to what media.
We realize that our customers consider every bit of data they save with us to be vital. When discussing backup solutions, however, data are typically grouped into four categories:
Critical data are those that must be backed up daily, restorable quickly, and sent offsite in a timely fashion.
Important data are those for which frequent or daily backups must be made, but only single copies exist. Furthermore, it is acceptable that access to the backup copies be difficult. This usually means that some or all of the backed-up data reside offsite.
Expendable data are those for which only infrequent backups are made—if backups are made at all. In addition, when backups are made they are not sent offsite.
Archival requests come about just before the decommissioning of a service or as part of an escrow server. These data are typically written to media with a long retention period (in the order of months to years) and sent offsite for storage.
Note: As far
as GATE Village’s services are concerned, there are no data that
we classify as Important. Any data worthy of backup we treat
as Critical.
How do we protect your data?
Hardware
After careful consideration of the
commodities available with regards to off-line data storage, GATE
Village has chosen to use a redundant, hot-backup, hard-drive-based
system. This offers an expandable system that brings excellent and
scalable performance to meet the growing needs of GATE Village
members. GATE Village does not utilize external services for storage
nor do any external service have access to any of the backup drives.
Server Computer
GATE Village has chosen the reliability
of Ubuntu Linux for all our server infrastructure including backup
servers.
Software
As a highly customized system being run
by IT Experts, GATE Village has created a proprietary and somewhat
unique backup solution designed to meet the needs of an expanding and
expansive network of computers. To date, no known commercial backup
solution could provide the requested functionality at any cost (and
cost for backup solutions is definitely a concern). As a proprietary
method, GATE Village regularly restores from backup to a protected
test server, ensuring the integrity of the backup.
Backup Schedules
GATE Village performs offsite
replication asynchronously to but in real-time with our online
service. While the actual time it takes to replicate any particular
transaction may vary depending on many conditions like network
congestion and transaction type, typical transactions are replicated
within seconds of completion.
System snapshots are made on an hourly basis both in the primary and secondary sites and both sites perform full backups on a daily basis. Thus, at any given time there there are typically 3 copies of non-archived data, 2 within the Primary data center and 1 in the offsite secondary data center.
Data Security with Encryption
GATE Village understands that some of
our customers trust us with highly sensitive data such that they need
to ensure that if the storage units are stolen from our Primary or
Secondary Offsite Storage Facility no confidential information will
be yielded. To facilitate such requirements, GATE Village offers
encryption options for specific Customer data.
Stand-alone and Dedicated Solutions
Most of these guidelines refer to a
‘typical’ customer’s backup solution. It is important to
reiterate that GATE Village recognizes that certain clients may have
very specific backup needs. We are committed to working with all of
our customers to develop a backup solution that is suitable for them.
Verification of our Backup Strategy
Minimally, every six months GATE
Village performs a mock disaster recovery process to ensure that our
staff, systems and procedures are prepared for a real catastrophe—and
to ensure that our strategy remains sound.
Business Customers with dedicated sites
can, for a fee, request that GATE Village do a mock disaster recovery
process on their own web site.
For added protection, our customers with dedicated backups have the option of creating “clones” of the backups created for them. They can store these clones in a separate offsite facility of their choice.