Why DataSure?

Are you sure your Greentree system is being backed up correctly and completely every day?

When did you last restore your backup to verify that it was up-to-date and useable? Is your backup available off-site in the event your server fails, your network is unusable or your building is inaccessible?

Backup corruption and data loss can be caused by a variety of factors:

and more…

The issue may only become apparent when you need to restore from a backup and can’t! What’s worse, data corrupted days, weeks or even months prior may mean your most recent backups are unusable and you have to restore a ‘clean’ backup that’s days, weeks or months old.

DataSure was established after a number of Greentree Consultants reported horror stories about backup failures and their consequences:

• No backup being done at all.

The server crashed, and the site had to restore to a copy of a database from a support copy of the database taken by their Greentree consultant 4 months earlier.

• Greentree Backup task-queue error.

The daily automatic Greentree Backup that went into error in the Greentree Task Queue, so the online backup didn’t run for 2 months. Users forgot they should have been getting a confirmation email and no-one actively monitored the backup. Two months of transactions and database changes (e.g. new GL accounts, Customer Master-file changes) had to be re-created, many of which had no paper audit trail.

• Greentree backup folder not being saved to tape/off-site.

While other folders and systems were being backed up, the Greentree backup folder was omitted due to user error. The outcome was the company had to re-process 4 months of transactions and database changes.

• The tape/off-site backup was set to back up the live Greentree system.

Rather than use the Greentree backup process then copying the backup file to tape/off-site, the company backed up the live database while it was open. This meant when the backup was restored it was unusable. 3 months of transactions and database changes had to be re-keyed.

• A corruption in the Greentree database was not identified for 2 weeks.

All the good backups on tape/off-site had been overridden by the corrupted database before the issue was found. The site had to restore to a backup that was 2 months old.

• The company’s tape/off-site backup started before the Greentree backup process was finished.

The tape/off-site backup of the Greentree backup folder started half-way through the Greentree online backup. The resulting backup could not be restored even though:
- the Greentree system reported that the backup had completed successfully
- the tape/off-site backup software reported that it had completed successfully

• VMware was set up incorrectly.

When disk space ran out, VMware overrode the live Greentree system with an image from a week earlier. VMware was also the backup strategy.

As many as 25% of Greentree sites did not get a clean backup last night!
If this happened to you, you’d have to restore a Greentree backup that was at least 3 days old.