Each month, Dr.Backup clients perform over 70,000 backup jobs resulting in millions of files being transferred onto our storage servers. Overall, the process runs very smoothly.

However, not every scheduled backup progresses to a successful completion. Sometimes jobs don’t start. Other times, a file or folder will “error out” and fail to transfer.

I estimate that each night, about 2% of all backups incur some sort of issue. Sometimes the problem is transient and clears the next day…but many times, it requires technical support intervention.

This past week, some of the problems we encountered included: a PC that was rebooted during middle of a backup, a disk drive that was completely full, a disk drive that started to malfunction, a new firewall configuration that blocked access to the Internet, file permissions on a server that were incorrectly set, Windows open file software was not functioning, and a user unintentionally backing up a 60 GB virtual machine image over a (slow) DSL connection.

We found one company that purchased a new server and completely forget that the backup software needs to be moved from the old box to the new!

Automated monitoring and support tools help Dr.Backup technicians identify the small percentage of backups that are troubled. This allows us to focus our attention on fixing (vs. finding) troubled backups.

Once we identify a problem, we notify the client technical support contact and actively work with this individual – or their IT consultant – to help ensure the next day’s backup runs clean.

Each client situation is different and must be looked at individually. This is sometimes a time-consuming and labor intensive process (which is completely ignored by most basic “econo” backup services.)

By monitoring backups – and proactively taking steps to fix problems  – we know that we are greatly enhancing our clients’ ability to recover from a data “mishap”.

All of us here at Dr.Backup understand that you depend on us to be there when all else fails. Proactive monitoring and repair of online backups is just one way we’ve got your BACK !