Off Site Data Backup Service

Do you currently have a SAN (Storage Area Network Solutions) from one of the top tier providers? Is you maintenance contract currently up for renewal?   You may want to consider comparing the cost of renewing maintenance on that SAN with purchasing a new SAN from Scale Computing.  A county in Michigan recently went through this scenario when their maintenance came up for renewal and in scrutinizing costs for savings went the route of purchasing a Scale SAN.  They were able to save money and got a brand new SAN on top of it.   LightBound offers Scale Computing SAN for direct customer purchase.  We also offer off site data backup service using Scale's SAN that can provide business continuity at a very effective cost.  If you have a current SAN and need to expand the Scale SAN solution may also make sense.  Most data migrates to a state of being accessed on an infrequent basis, which would be a perfect fit for the Scale Computing SAN.  You can use your current SAN for high performance needs and migrate stale data to the Scale SAN at a much lower operating cost.   See www.scalecomputing.com/ for more information on Scale or to watch a webinar click on Scale Webinar.

LightBound now has a direct fiber connection to the Chase Tower in downtown Indianapolis.   The direct fiber connectivy enables tenants in the building to take advantage of LightBound's suite of services such as hosted virtual server, cloud services, hosted VoIP PBX Solutions, virtual storage, and off site data backup service.   Customers can connect to the fiber for $995 per month which provides a 100 MB connection to the data center bundled with 10 MB of Internet with bursting capability.   Hosted VoIP PBX solutions through Fonaliy are available starting at $34.99 per seat monthly for 5 users and as the number of users increases the prices drops to $18.99 per seat for 51-99 users!  If you are a business owner interested in hosted voice service check out Fonality for Executive video. This is a great service to help with business continuity planning as customers can either host their critical IT and voice services at the LightBound data center or backup critical data to Lightbound's storage as a service platform.  LightBound also has a business continuity.disaster recovery center with 32 seats each with a computer and a phone that can enable a company to minimize disruption of business operations in the event their building is not available for use.  Contact your LightBound account manager for more information on this new service!

LightBound is an Indiana VoIP provider that is now offering a complete hosted VoIP service service.  If you are looking for VoIP PBX Solutions and don't want to invest a lot of up front capital this is the service that you have been looking for.  A hosted VoIP service is a great part of a Business Continuity solution that can help keep your business up and running in the event of business disruption at your office.  The LightBound hosted voice fits directly inthe Cloud Services model that many customers are looking for today.   If you have been looking at outsourcing management of services to a provider of virtualization services, replication of critical data to a off-site virtual storage or off site data backup service, why not consider moving your phone system to a provider of hosted VoIP PBX solutions like LightBound.  The service starts at 5 users and will scale up to 100 users. The hosted service uses Fonality trixBox Enterprise Edition which provides an award winning user interface, HUD, to help improve productivity.  See HUD for Employees or HUD for Executives for all the productivity enhancement the your business can benefit from.   If your organization outgrows the hosted application and you need an on premise VoIP PBX Solutions its an easy transition to a dedicated Fonality VoIP server for your business. LightBound can simplify the operations of your business by being a single source for Internet Service Indiana

Infrastructure as a Service is definitely going to become a commodity offering and with economies of scale, virtual network services will be a high volume, low margin product.  Cloud Services providers are already offering Hosted Virtual Server, Storage Area Network Solutions, Off Site Data Backup Services, and even Storage as a Service combined with Server Collocation for pennies on the dollar compared to legacy physical network and server infrastructures.  That being said, the leading contributor to competitive advantage in the Virtualization Services and Cloud Services market is going to be how the service is differentiated from the "commodities".  What are those differentiators?  Depends on the customers your targeting, including their size and type of business, their vertical, and other numerous variables.  In my next blog I'll talk more about how LightBound is setting itself apart with added value beyond the base Infrastructure offering.

Go Cloud!

Sam Newberry

If you have a Compellent or Scale SAN and desire to replicate for business continuity or data disaster recover LightBound offers Storage as a Service to meet your needs.    LightBound can be the one stop shop to accommodate as we have Indiana WAN services with multiple carriers to provide a large circuit directly from your office to our data center to provide backup needs.  A large circuit is generally needed as 100 GB takes 2.2 hours to replicate your SAN.  If you have a SAN with another manufacturer and would like off site data backup service you can use a backup application to a NFS or CIFS share to back up remotely. If you need to also need a server platform to recoer we also offer hosted virtual server platform that can be paired with replicated SAN or can be used to restore backup data.   If you would like some more information plan on attending our lunch and learn in April or contact one of our account managers.

In part one I identified the three types of cloud services: public, private, and hybrid.  So what are the differences?  Well, again all three offer virtual network services such as storage as a service, server virtualization services, and off site data backup service, among many other services.  So before I can talk about the differences, I have to talk about their similar roots.  Referred to as "Cloud Computing", this commonality between the different types of cloud services is the underlying deployment and delivery model, enabling Internet based real-time delivery of products, services and solutions.  Thus "Cloud Computing" is the enabling of "Cloud Services", of which public, private, and hybrid are all a part.

Coming up will be the definition of cloud services as a whole, followed by the dissection of the three types of cloud services.

Go Cloud!

Today we met with one our sport teams clients in Indy and we are implementing our LightBound Storage as a Service product.  We are going take advantage of our dark fiber resources and partnership with Scale Computing and Double Take to backup their physical and virtual servers to our data center in Indy and then replicate their data to our out of state data center.   This will give them multiple levels of backup - first they will use Double Take to backup to the Scale Computing local SAN and then the Scale will replicate that LightBound local Scale shared storage server at our Indy data center and then we will then replicate their data again to our Scale shared storage server in our data center out state.  This will give our client multiple backups of their data using our LightBound Storage as a Service products and using our LightBound Cloud Services to transport their data to our out of state data center.

Not all Cloud Services are the same.  There are some stark differences between one provider's virtual network services and another.  At a high level, there are three commonly accepted cloud service types: Public Cloud, Private Cloud, and Hybrid Cloud.  All three offer virtual network services such as storage as a service, server virtualization services, and off site data backup service.  In part two I will discuss this commonality and what Cloud Computing is and how it is different than Cloud Services.

Go Cloud!

With the recent affordability of large Ethernet circuits, services are more affordable to transport over that same circuit. LightBound is able to provide VoIP, Internet access, off site data backup service, and virtual network services over the same circuit, whereas in the past most customers would use several smaller circuits to achieve the same solution.

LightBound, an Indiana server collocation provider offers a unique solution to your business continuity needs. In our data center we can supply mail server hosting, high speed Internet, and off site data backup service, along with many other services.

LightBound, an Indiana Managed Server Host can now offer virtual managed servers and storage. This adds to the many service options for off site data backup. Business continuity is a vital component in today's business.

LightBound will be expanding to a third building for server collocation in November.  Customers who desire some redundancy in data centers can house equipment in separate buildings.  The new building will be at 800 Oliver Street, one half block south of 731 W. Henry Street.  It will be on a separate power service and generator from the building on 731 W. Henry Street. 

LightBound also offers off site off site data backup service which can add a level of redundancy to your operation.  Servers at the data center can be backed up and customers with circuits at T1 level or higher can have their server data backed up at their corporate locations.  The backups are done over the network between data centers at the Henry Street complex to the administrative office at 2500 E. 46th Street. 

If you are looking to improve disaster recovery and business continuity LightBound has the data centers and backup services to get the job done!

Businesses have to plan for operating in event of a disruption in business operations at their main facilities.  This planning is commonly referred to as business continuity.  Since most business rely heavily on IT it would make sense to plan on having critical resources available over the Internet.  Internet is highly available so employees can access when they are on the road traveling away from the office or working at home.  To keep the business up and running it would pay off to have your critical information backed up using  off site data backup service and using server collocation to have backup servers or primary servers   This would surely help in data disaster recovery if the primary location was every effected by a power outage, damage of equipment, or theft.  The data housed on equipment at the data center or back up service could be restored and get the business up and running at the main facility.   LightBound can be a one stop shop for business continuity needs providing WAN, Indiana Server Hosting, and Internet Service Indiana. 

LightBound is Indiana's leading Data Recovery and Disaster Recovery businesses. We can offer off site data backup services over your current Internet service connection. Most business continuity plans today must have a disaster recovery plan. For daily backup needs LightBound can use tape backups or full server backups using Arkeia.

The most common question that are customers are asking about today is higher bandwidth and faster connectivity for Internet Service Indiana or for companies to connect to Server Collocation in the data center.   Many customers today have T1 circuits for Internet or Collocation and are pushing the circuits to the limits of their capacity.  The cost of Ethernet circuits for 6 and 10 MB, and even 100 MB has decreased drastically compared to costs in the past.  Customers are looking for the larger circuits as they are interested in moving their primary or backup servers to a high availability and highly secure data center that is staffed 24 x 7 x 365.   They are also looking at disaster recovery and performing off site data back service.  Customers are also moving to "cloud computing" applications such as Salesforce and need much larger bandwidth to handle the needs of increased Internet demand.  An increase to an Ethernet circuit (typically at least 6 MB or above) versus a T1 circuit (1.5 MB) can result in a four fold increase in bandwidth.   Customers can contract for Internet Service Indiana with a contracted Internet rate lower than the circuit bandwidth and get an advantage of bursting over the contracted rate on occasion without extra costs.  Bursting is charged using what's known as 95th percentile billing which allows the customer to burst over contracted rate for 36 hours per month without additional charges.   If you need High Speed Internet in Indiana contact us today to see how cost effective an Ethernet circuit can be to deliver your Internet or connect to our data center.

For Data Recovery Indiana consider setting up a Managed Servers Hosting at Lightbound's data center.  Many Small Business Server Hosting customers who are looking for business continuity are now setting up their backup or even their primary servers at the data center.   Lightbound provides 24 x 7 x 365 managed support with a high availability data center with power, HVAC, and security round the clock. Customer's can consolidate their data and use our Off site Data Backup Service along with Server collocation to protect their servers.  If they have a VOIP PBX solution they can move all their voice services to the data center as we are one of the few SIP Indiana VOIP providers.   Additionally centralizing WAN communications at the data center can completely provide a robust solution to keep a business up an running through most any type of weather related incident.  Look to Lightbound data center for the optimum in business continuity.

Hi everyone,

As we continue to install VOIP PBX systems one of the interesting things that we have noticed is that many customers have purchased unlicensed VOIP Asterisk system.  We have noticed there are no easy upgrade paths for these customers.  What seems to be happening with these unlicensed system is that when a new version of the software comes out, the customers have to reinstall the desktop software.   This means lots of maintenance issues for the customers that want to run the newest software versions,  for new features the customers want.

So as you go to look for VOIP Service Providers and Indiana PBX providers make sure you understand how they are going to upgrade the system without you have to touch every desktop.  Also make sure they have Off Site Data Backup Service for this system and a good Disaster Recovery plan.

Many of these providers are not CLEC's so they can't help you with disaster recovery options for your dial tone.

Just some food for thought.

Have a great day.

jack

Almost every meeting I attend people talk about Off Site Data Backup Service.  This service needs to be part of your Data Disaster Recovery Plan.  Most customer need to add to their plan and put in a robust regular testing procedure to go along with their Off Site Data Backup Service.  We have found that most people backup their data and some even backup their data off site, but never successfully try to recover from it. 

If they are successfully with backup and restoring their data they don't consider how to restore their applications as well as their data.  Making sure you have the complete solution for Off Site Data Backup Service is critical.  There is so much more than just backup your data and recovery from it.  This is a great step, but also having a devices(servers) to recover your data to is just as important.  Also having a location(office or data center) to work out of and recover too is also important.

These are just a few things to think about when doing Off Site Data Backup Service.

Regards - jack carr
Lightbound

www.lightbound.com

Hi everyone -

It was a crazy week in Server Collocation business, spent most week with a client with several needs from Disaster Recover and Off Site Data Backup Service to Mail Server Host.

The service providers (including us) are really changing from offering one or two IP Services to completing outsourcing customer application.  Most clients are just wanting to run their application and not spend their time taking care of networks and servers infrastructures.

That is what is making service providers changing business plans every few years.  It makes the job fun.

regards - jack