Two thirds of C9 customers now subscribe to our online backup service.  Taking ownership of protecting your business data is an awesome responsibility.  C9 is a software company; so protecting our own data against information loss is fundamental to our ongoing success as a business operation also.

As such backups are something we spend alot of time thinking about.  Our backup solution could be considered to be massively over-engineered, yet in spite of this we are constantly thinking about the integrity of the solution.  There is no room for complacency.  You can never have too many backups, or systems of control to ensure the fidelity of those backups.

We are currently in the process to adding another backup server into our solution.  The server will serve dual roles, as another backup server and also as a backup to our primary web server; so that if there is a hardware fault with our web server, we can switch internet traffic to the secondary server if necessary.

Whenever you raise an invoice in c9, if you have online backup that information is within a few seconds copied onto:

• 4 physically separate computers. (Our main server, three backup servers)
• 7 different hard disks (under c9's direct control)
• In addition to the above, CDP server is managed by our internet partner, web24, precise disk topology is unknown to us, but I would expect it to be at least a 3 disk RAID 5 array; this is in addition of the 7 disks we directly control.

The addition of a new backup server increases backup coverage from 3 servers and 5 disks.

Online backup is more than just backup. It provides:

• Infrastructure for web based access, web sites. mobile remote inventory management, aussie bike finder and bikesales listings
• Active read verification that the backed up data is both accurate and readable.  Even the most diligent users of c9 do not test that their backups can actually work.  Online backup does this automatically and invisibly in multiple tests and contexts

Server computers do fail, typically we receive one support call every two months relating to server/hard disk failure.

New online backup network infrastructure looks like this: