FAQs

Through transparent consultation and expert guidance, we help our partners discover opportunities for growth, efficiency and risk-reduction.

What is disaster recovery?

Disaster recovery is the restoration of normal operations after any type of business interruption. While most businesses think “disaster” refers to floods, storms, fires and other unexpected environmental events, the most common causes of business interruptions are from human error, equipment failures, and malware. While those three threat vectors are the most common, ransomware attacks are one of the fastest-growing cyber threats in recent history – reports of ransomware incidents increased 62% in 2021 compared to 2020.

Why do you need disaster recovery?

When your systems go down it costs you money. According to ITIC, a single hour of downtime costs enterprises an average of $100,000 to $300,000. A small or medium size company will average 7 hours of downtime at a cost of $8,600 per hour. Downtime annoys, and sometimes loses, customers. While most backup services will help you recover files, true disaster recovery will help you rapidly restore systems, such as email, HR, inventory, customer service and other software your company depends on.

What is disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS)?

It is similar to the Software as a Service model, in that it is an on demand service. Unlike pure SaaS models, however, most DRaaS providers also require hardware purchases and licensing agreements, making them more expensive and difficult to manage. This really defeats the purpose of an “as a Service” model.

Using these traditional DRaaS services, not only are organizations forced to buy hardware, they also need to monitor, manage, and maintain the service they deployed. This adds to the workload for already stressed IT and staff resources, taking time away from other important initiatives. As a result, these back up systems aren’t always updated, the hardware isn’t always maintained and the system is rarely tested. When a disaster does occur, staff may need to scramble with an untested, antiquated solution that may not successfully recover data and systems. Even companies who outsource these jobs, are still paying dearly for it. MSP or IT professionals still need to devote significant resources to ensuring backups are running regularly and smoothly and recovery is quick and effective.

What is a Recovery Point Objective?

A Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is a measure of how up to date your backups are. It is the maximum amount of time between backups. The time between backups is the maximum amount of work that is at risk in a disaster. SDV technology is unique in the industry in that we can support RPO on a server by server basis. That means you could, for example, have one mission critical application that has a one-hour RPO, and also a Print server that just needs once daily backups.

One size does not fit all. With Sky Data Vault you can customize RPOs based on the requirements of your organization.

What is a Recovery Time Objective?

The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the maximum time it takes to restore the organization to full operational status after a loss or interruption. Sky Data Vault’s service portfolio allows the you to choose the right RTO for your organization. SDV offers a full range of options. We can deliver near real-time recovery on a local Sky Data Vault managed recovery appliance (BDR) or in the secure Sky Data Vault cloud. We can have your systems at the ready in under 30 minutes in the secure SDV Cloud. We offer several configurations to meet your urgency and budget requirements. Please call to discuss your specific needs with one of our experts. We are happy to suggest options in clear language that will meet your needs.

What is Snapshotting?

Snapshotting was originally intended as a way to create “moment in time” back ups of a system prior to making changes to the network. As an ongoing back-up methodology, it has some inherent problems.

Snapshotting begins by taking a baseline backup of everything on the system. It then takes “snapshot” images of your entire system based on your RPO, or frequency of back-ups. As it is a whole-system image, the size of the back-up can be a large drain on the network and your bandwidth. Then these “snapshots” need to go through a complicated merge process in order to keep a current baseline image that is ready to be restored in case of a data loss.

Be certain to ask your Disaster Recovery provider if they use Snapshotting.

The vulnerability here is that if anything happens to any of the incremental snapshot images – either during a back-up or during a merge – you’ve lost everything. You will have to start over with a new baseline. This kind of snapshot failure is not uncommon.

What is the File and Folder method?

“File and Folder” is a proven backup methodology that has been used for decades as the standard for backing up a network. Similar to Snapshotting it starts with a baseline image of the systems you are protecting. That is where the similarity ends.

The incremental backups are executed in an entirely different way. At each backup point, File and Folder scans the system for updated files and folders. It captures only these changed files and folders. It is vastly faster and more efficient, using vastly less bandwidth and storage space for each backup than a snapshot will. The merge is far, far less complex – and less likely to fail.

Here’s the big advantage – if any files were to be corrupted or lost during the backup, the rest of the files remain in tact. So even if there were a massive failure mid-backup, your losses would be minimal. Your backups are far more reliable and fast.

Be certain to ask your service provider if they use the File and Folder backup method.

What is an Agent Partner?

We partner with software sales agents to provide the best possible offerings to their business clients. Our partner community comprises technology experts that advise organizations on technology and software options in the marketplace. Sometimes referred to as “Expert Generalists”, organizations look to these Partners to offer unbiased recommendations on the best way technology can meet the specific challenges of the organization.

We make life easy for our partners by giving them clear, easy to understand information and by supporting the entire sales cycle.

DRaaS is an immediate revenue growth opportunity for partners. It is a great introduction to many cloud services your clients want today. Sky Data Vault does all of the sales and engineering support on the front end Discovery and Scope process. We handle all of the onboarding for the Partner clients and manage any necessary migrations. Partners that sell SDV services have an easy sale, a satisfied customer, and a growing revenue stream.

What is an MSP?

A Managed Service Provider (MSP) offers small, medium and enterprise sized clients outsourced IT services. Organizations reach out to MSP’s for everything from help desk support, software development, and even virtual CIO (vCIO) planning and support. They become the trusted advisor for all aspects of technology within an organization.

The SDV service portfolio offers a wide range of solutions for MSP’s looking to improve their offering while reducing costs and complexity. Because you do not have to buy any hardware up front, you profit immediately from the sale. Our MSP partners average fewer than ONE trouble ticket per client per year. That saves you time so that you can build your business.

What is Sky Data Vault’s architecture footprint?

Sky Data Vault is a privately-held managed cloud services provider. SDV operates in 4 separate Tier 3 Data Centers, all based in the US and connected by dedicated lines. These Data Centers include two storage nodes (Sacramento, CA and Sterling, VA), a recovery node (Miami, FL), and an infrastructure node (Dallas, TX).

How is data replicated to and from the cloud?

Sky Data Vault is an Agent-based solution. The SDV Agent is installed on all the servers the customer wants protected. There is no additional hardware needed to perform the backup – the SDV Agent will denote any incremental changes since the last backup, then send the new encrypted backup to the Secure SDV Cloud.

Are SDV’s solutions scalable?

Sky Data Vault is purpose-built to support evolving customer environments. SDV can support data growth, an increased number of servers protected, and upgrades from BaaS to DRaaS to IaaS.

What is White Glove Implementation?

Sky Data Vault provides White Glove Implementation. This includes meeting with staff to map out the servers that need protection, determining the appropriate seeding methodology, scheduling the silent install of the SDV Agent, and writing a script to allow for a mass deployment. These meetings ensure SDV services are deployed correctly, align to the customers requirements, and provide the highest level of confidence in the services provided.

Can SDV’s capabilities adjust to changing business requirements, backup schedules and data sources?

Sky Data Vault provides managed solutions that are supported 24x7x365. The customer can contact SDV at any time via phone call, email, or the SDV ticketing system to make any required edits or changes to its infrastructure supported by SDV. The customer also has the ability to make changes and add systems without SDV assistance using the SDV Agent.

What is Immutable Storage?

Immutable backup or storage means that your data is fixed, unchangeable and can never be deleted. Immutable backups are vital for companies that need to maintain a copy of data that is always recoverable and secure from undesired and unforeseen accidents.

Once you have stored an immutable backup, it cannot be altered or changed. This is particularly important when it comes to malware or ransomware. If your backup is immutable, then it is impervious to new ransomware infections. By keeping an archive of immutable backups, you can guarantee recovery from a ransomware attack by finding and recovering the last clean backup you have on record.

SDV has designed our services with immutable storage built in! Backups are stored with AES 256 Encryption across multiple US-based SDV storage locations. Each location consists of multiple servers and storage nodes that will store and keep separate each backup for that customer. Deletion only occurs when an authorized customer creates a ticket for SDV to delete.

What does Air Gapping mean?

An air-gapped backup, as part of your backup and recovery strategy, is a copy of your organization's data that's offline and inaccessible. Without an internet or other network connection, it's impossible for your backup device to be remotely hacked or corrupted.

SDV has designed our services with an “air gap” built in! With our 1:2:1 Methodology, backups are stored with AES 256 Encryption across multiple US-based SDV storage locations. Each location consists of multiple servers and storage nodes that will store and keep separate each backup for that customer. These locations are separate from the Recovery location, which is only connected when the customer requires a recovery.

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