"Not only does this backup save us time, I can't say enough about how well the bare metal restore worked for us, and how inexpensive this portion truly is. Again we do save time, but more importantly, we save frustration from dealing with tape backups and restores."

Steve, IT Director
Northland Financial

"Connecting Point Computer Center's Dakota Backup has allowed us to take a huge step forward in protecting our data with their state-of-the-art data protection solution. Previously we were backing up nine locations in a fragmented manner, using tape based solutions. Now, instead of having our IT staff dedicate many hours each week traveling to support the tape based solutions, we can manage it centrally using Dakota Backup. We also sleep well at night knowing our data is safe, secure, reliable, and readily available."

TK, Network Administrator
Meade School District 46-1

Dakota Backup

How Much Data Can You Afford to Lose?

The question we ask many of you, our customers, is, "How much data can you afford to lose?" It's not a scare tactic, instead, it's a serious question to determine how we can build a solution to meet the increased data protection and disaster recovery needs for your business. New legislation and the growing importance of data in the information age require that company directors and managers take actions to protect their data. Connecting Point’s Dakota Backup service has a couple of great solutions to help you minimize a potentially serious business risk – the loss of data. The solutions are Off-site Backup using Dakota Backup services or the Cirrus server imaging server.

Off-site Backup with Dakota Backup

Off-site backup with Dakota backup is a fully automated process with backups held on disk for rapid file restoration. It features both secure online transfer of fully encrypted data to off-site data centers as well as the local store of files to try to limit restoration time for large files. There is no capital outlay providing a sound basis for business continuity planning – not matter what happens, your data is safe.

Features of Off-site Backup

Service | Consultant | Client | Support | Advice | Assistance | Contact | Help Risk reduction - the vulnerability of your organization having incomplete backups is virtually eliminated, giving you peace of mind. Disaster contingency - the service has inherent disaster recovery capabilities thereby allowing your company to continue in spite of unforeseen natural or human created disasters. This ensures business and revenue continuity. Regulatory compliance - sending your encrypted data off-site is an important step in remaining compliant with regulations. Fewer worries for you and your attorney.

Restoration speed - restore times for accidentally deleted files are dramatically reduced, making your end users more productive. Restores are fast, easy, and manageable. At today's business pace, you can't afford to be "down". Scheduled automatic backups - ensure continuous round-the-clock protection.

Management efficiencies - removing the tedious task of managing the backup and restore process will more effectively use management time. Time that can be spent on profitable activities.

Ease of future planning - the Dakota Backup service simply grows as your data volume increases, allowing you to focus on business growth instead of IT headaches. That's a convenience you need.

Cost effectiveness - the Dakota Backup service has an ROI that beats any hardware/software offerings which claim to address the same issues. At the end of the day, what is your data worth?

No capital outlay - service is charged on a monthly 'usage' basis, eliminating the need to buy expensive hardware/software that will require frequent updates.

For your IT department - Delta processing, compression and de-duplication significantly reduce network bandwidth and storage consumption; Enterprise-class fault tolerance capabilities include advanced N+1 grid computing support; Advanced encryption for data in-flight and at-rest delivers complete data security; Supports leading O/S, servers, databases, email systems and storage environments.

Disaster Recovery with a Cirrus Server

Unlike off-site backups, the process with a Cirrus Backup Server is a little different. With a Cirrus Backup Server, instead of traditional off-site file backups and restores, the Cirrus Server captures an image of your server that is stored on the local Cirrus Server appliance. Although the file is not taken off-site by default, the file can be taken off-site to better implement and ensure disaster recovery capabilities.

The biggest advantage of the Cirrus Server using imaging technology is that the image can be converted from an image file, to a Microsoft virtual hard drive (.vhd) or VMware virtual machine and then mounted using Hyper-V or VMWare.

The Cirrus Server can greatly decrease your recovery time and will assist you in meeting your organization’s Recover Time Objective (RTO), Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and provide complete data protection. As a Connecting Point Dakota Backup partner you can deliver all of this as a managed service to your customers with the ease of working with one single vendor.

Complete Disaster Recovery Solutions

Why consult multiple vendors to protect your data when one company can cover all your needs? Whether you select Connecting Point’s Dakota Backup Service or the Cirrus Imaging Server, Connecting Point can provide your company with a complete solution. Not only can we help you protect your servers but we can protect your company’s digital footprint, the data created and consumed by mobile devices, desktops, and servers running different operating systems, along with numerous critical applications.