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Web Page Backup and Restoration

Back Ups

We have several plans for archival.  The data can be stored in-house (least price), in a fire vault in-house, off-site by us, off-site in a fire vault by us, off-site by third party (most expensive).  The price depends on size and archival intervals.

Files we create for your website

If we create your website, there are two possibilities.

    1)  Your website could be done, finished, complete with no need for changes.  In this case, we will remove your website from the development system and archive the finished product.  This will be stored in our off-site fire vault. Since the files are no longer part of our ongoing development, there is a fee for extra storing and recovery.

    2) Your website is an on-going project with constant changes and updates.  In this case, your website will most likely be on our development systems, depending on how much work is being done, and how often we perform tasks relating to your files.  Our own in-house archival plan will protect your files to the same degree that our other data is protected. At the first level of protection, we use an automated backup system that monitors our development files. When we work on files as part of the development cycle, we do frequent saves to ensure what we were working on is saved to disk. As soon as a file we are working on is saved, the monitoring system makes a backup of that file to a different drive. This backup process compares the just saved file with the last one in the backup archive, and saves only the differences between the two. Compared to saving an entire extra copy of the file each time, this saves on the amount of data being saved. It takes many individual changes to ever get to be half the size of the original file. At any time we wish to get a file from the archive, the archive system creates the file based on the individual incremental changes. As a result of this type of automated backup system, we can generally re-create any version of a file we wish. To ensure that the archive does not increase incrementally forever, after a set number of months in the archive, the oldest incremental changes are used to form a new full size file, and the older incremental ones discarded. Keep in mind this type of archival is not for perpetual archive protection. It is to protect files being edited often. Our other archival full backups ensure we have full copies of the files from the very beginning.

When the editing session is complete for the day, a copy of all of the development files are copied to a different drive just in case our development drive should ever fail. This is a copy of ALL development files. Not all of the development files are loaded to a website for public access. For example, if we create a logo, the finished file that is published to the web will probably be a GIF or a PNG file format. However, the original file that was edited might be a PhotoShop file (PSD) or it may have been in a file format provided to use by you, and that file might have been a BMP file or even a JPEG file. We keep a copy of the website development files that WILL be loaded to the website on another drive. This copy would have the GIF or PNG files, but not the PSD or BMP files. This backup copy is what the website will have the next time it is updated. First, we will need to test this copy of the website locally before the public website is updated. These Daily backups of all files are another assurance we have copies of the files we are working on.

In addition to having a copy of the next public version of the website files locally, we also keep a copy of the actual website files that are already on the public version of the website. These are stored separately in case we ever need to test the public website locally. At some point, editing of webpages are at a level they can be published. After the public version is updated, the local copy of the public website is updated to match.

For the data we archive in-house, there is no guarantee that we could not succumb to the same fate as any other facility, fire, flood, vandalism, acts of God, etc.  Therefore, we archive all in-house data to a safe off-site fire vault on a daily basis.  This is for our own safety.  As a by-product, it also protects your files while we are developing them (no fee charged for this service). The data is stored on an encrypted drive, so no one will have access to the data other than ourselves.

For our own data, we also have our own cloud backup services. This is performed on a daily basis to ensure any changes made within the last 24 hours are also stored in one extra location. These files include any files we are working on, including any files of your website we might be working on. For these files, we are protecting our own work.

NOTE: We do not store "finished" customer files on cloud services for free, but we do offer the service as a charge (see below).

At any one time, there are at least 7 copies of our files in one stage or another. Additionally, the hard drives that we use for development and for backups are all RAID Level 5 Systems. RAID Systems use multiple drives to store data. RAID Level 5 uses "striping" to write the data across several drives in a way that a single drive failure will not cause a loss of data. Should one of the drives of the RAID System fail, a replacement drive can be changed, all while the power is still on. Once the new drive is installed, all data that was stored on that drive is re-written. Once that process is complete, again the RAID System has full redundancy. We always have several new drives available should we ever have a RAID drive failure.

Files you create for your website

We can provide backup services for files you create the same way we protect our own files. You should always keep a copy of your own files in a safe place, the same we we do. In some cases, that might not be possible. For example, if you have a laptop, and it has a single drive, the most you can do with your own computer is a make a backup copy of the files somewhere else on the same drive. That doesn't really protect you in case of a hard drive failure. If you do not have an external drive to store files on, you could consider cloud services the same way we do. As an alternative or as an extra level of protection, you could use our backup services.

If you use our backup services to store files you created, there is a recovery fee should you ever need to recover from our copy. For files we created as part of an in-house ongoing project, we do not charge a fee for recovery because we have near instant access to any files we have been working on.

You can provide us with your files in any format, such as regular files, or as an encrypted file (or files). Your files will be encrypted before being stored on any third-arty backup service we use. This is to ensure that if North Korea does get a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead to the mainland, that when they get here to go through the ruble, your encrypted files will give them one more task to work on.

You can choose to have us pay particular attention to your data on a regular basis, from daily to monthly.

Restore

Should there ever be a disaster, you will appreciate having your backup.  The next step is to restore the lost data from the backup.  Backups can take place on a regular scheduled basis.  The Restore operation is another thing all together.  These are emergency procedures, and we understand that.  You need your data and you need it as soon as possible.

There are fees for restoration.  We make every attempt to make them reasonable and based on how well we perform in getting your data back up and running.  Time is money, and the amount we charge is based on how soon we can respond to your needs.

The fees are:
    Overall Restore Fee: $100.
    Contact Response Fee - Maximum $10 (based on how long it takes us to respond).
    Retrieval from our storage facilities - Maximum $30 (based on how long it takes us to respond)
    Reload of data - $5/GB (based on amount of data)

Contact Response Fee:  Your contact fee is based on how soon we respond to your call.  The longer we take, the less you pay.  Here is how it works:

When you sign up for Backup services, we will provide you with an emergency number service.  They will have our current set of emergency numbers and will know how to contact us, regardless of where in the world we are, or what time of the day it is.  In the event that you need to call the emergency center, you will need to give the personnel your account number and a contact phone number to return your call.  After you hang up, the emergency center will call you back to confirm the number you gave them is correct. When you give the emergency center your number initially, make sure the emergency service reads your phone number back to you and that it is correct, otherwise, you will need to call back.  If you have to call back because the number was not written down properly or otherwise, the time will have to start from when you called back a second time (we are not responsible for the number not being written down properly).  The emergency number service will log the time of your call.  It is important that you know this.  You should ask and agree on the logged time of the call.  When you hang up from contacting the emergency number service (first or second time), this time will be logged as the official start time that the emergency number service uses to contact us.

At the same time, you should start an e-mail (if possible) detailing the situation and any additional information that might be helpful.  As soon as we get the phone call, we will check our e-mail for the details, initiate a return call to talk to you in person, and pull your most recent archival.

If you do not hear back within 30 minutes, you should call the emergency number service again.  There is the possibility that your contact number was not written down properly, clearly or otherwise when it was transferred to us. If we have any problems calling you back, we will also contact the emergency center to double-check the number, since it should have worked for them when they initially returned your call.

When you hang up from contacting the emergency number service (first or second time), they will attempt to contact us.  We allow 10 minutes in order for them to contact multiple numbers in order to reach us.  At the ten minute mark, the clock starts ticking.  If we do not respond to you within 100 minutes, there is no response fee.  Your fee is based on 1% per minute.  Understand, the 100 minute mark does not mean that we will take more or less time than 100 minutes, only that if we are to charge a fee, we have to get busy.  It is our assurance to you that we will do everything possible to take care of your needs because the clock is ticking!

Retrieval from our storage facilities:  Your fee again is based on our response.  Again, the fee is based on percentages and the 100 minute mark.  The data may be stored in-house, or off-site.

In-house retrieval: You will know how much time we took when we initiate upload of data minus 10 minutes.  We may need 10 minutes of time to get your data ready for upload (the clock does not start ticking until the first ten minutes have passed).

Off-site retrieval: You will know how much time we took when we initiate upload of data minus 30 minutes.  We may need 30 minutes of time to get your data ready for upload.  10 minutes to get there, 10 minutes to get back, and 10 minutes to get the data ready (the clock does not start ticking until the first thirty minutes have passed).

Reload of data: This fee is based on the amount of data that needs to be restored.  Price: $5/GB

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Web Development Services taken on a First-Come-First-Served basis!