Backing up your computer is one of the best things you can ever do, we all hate to lose things especially important stuff such as work related documents or our favorite music. You can lose your data in many ways, the most common being a virus or malware on your computer.
The Data Centre
A data centre is a massive warehouse stocked full of special servers and other data computers in what we call rack mounts. Rack mounts are special shelves where the servers slot into, we use rack mounts because it allows us to store more servers in the warehouse as opposed to using normal desks. You can see one of these data centres in action right here:
As you can see, each and every single computer is stored right on top of each other to give maximum space on the floors and also helps to pack more servers in! Now you might not ever see this room at all in your entire life but you can still rent some space from data centres for your backup files.
How do I Rent?
There are two ways of going about it, you can either rent a shared space on one of the servers which you will be sharing with many other people, or simply just buy a dedicated server for yourself to use (this is more expensive!).
Sharing a server is the best option in this case, this does not mean other people will be able to access your files! The server is cut into small pieces, not literally but digitally! It is cut up so 20 users get a piece of their pie and the other users cannot access any other part of the server at all, such as your information.
High Speed Connectivity
The day’s of getting disconnected when transferring files have gone! Data centre typically have T1 lines which are extremely fast, they do not lose connection either. My rented data centre has T3 lines which is a HUGE speed to have, I use it to transfer client files, a speed test sees speeds of over 80 MB in file transferring.
Costs
The costs for renting a data centre can be really low, the server I rent is just $29! No… really it is! I am allowed two people logging into it at the same time and I have 5GB of space, this is because I do not require anymore as I only backup my client’s files and they are text documents. If you need to update more then you can get a bigger space package and these can go all the way up to $100 a month – where you will get 20 GB+.
The best thing you can do is shop around and get a few good quotes, use the Internet for this, ironic really isn’t it? Going through data centres to shop for one? Haha! Anyway just grab some quotes and weigh up the options of each package and go with the best, happy hunting!
Bio: Joe uses ShareFile by Citrix to backup his client’s files so he does not lose them off his laptop. This has happened to him before where 6 months worth of client data got wiped from his machine due to a malware infection! He is not more cautious and looks after his data well, he now backs up his files twice a day!