Active Rescue for Data - How it Works

This illustration gives a brief overview of what Active Rescue for Data does and how it works.

System Components

A typical Active Rescue installation would use the following equipment:

  • A network disk for backup on the local office network.
  • An Active Rescue server with broadband internet access of at least 2 MBits/second.
  • Internet "Cloud" data storage for 10 GBytes of data, optionally provided by COEXPANSIVE.
  • Three portable USB disks, one attached to the server, two stored at an off-site location.
  • A COEXPANSIVE rescue DVD at the off-site location.
  • A USB security memory stick holding your electronic encryption key at the off-site location.

Backup to Local Network Disk

Regularly, throughout the day, all your office PC's, laptops and servers backup new and changed files to a local network disk device. This step creates the first safe copy of all your data quickly and easily on your local network.

Encrypted Portable Backup

The daily Active Rescue processing starts after office hours when your network is quiet. The first thing Active Rescue does is to ensure it has a full copy of all files on the network disk stored on a local removable disk drive and protected with industry standard data encryption using an electronic key. This creates a second backup copy of all your files.

Remote Cloud Storage Protection

The connected removable disk is one of three that Active Rescue uses to protect your data. Disks 2 & 3 are stored safely off-site, perhaps at a second business location, at home or in a bank safe deposit box. Any new files created today, or existing files that have been changed today, have been copied to the red "Disk 1" but are missing from "Disk 2" and "Disk 3", currently off-site.

Active Rescue encrypts and uploads to Internet "Cloud" storage a copy of all these new and changed files. Active Rescue can pause or slow down any uploads not completed by the next morning to guarantee that normal business Internet use is not affected.

If you have chosen to have COEXPANSIVE monitor your system, a short summary will be sent to us detailing how much data was copied and how long it took to protect. Next business day we will check the summary to make sure all is running smoothly. Your privacy is assured as we have no access to your data at any time.

Swap Disks Weekly

In order to keep the off-site data fresh, once a week bring in the oldest of the two off-site disks, swap it for the currently attached disk and then take the newly removed disk off-site.

The data on the disks is fully encrypted and you are not carrying a copy of the key when you are transporting disks to or from the office. In the unfortunate event of disk loss or theft during transport, your data cannot be accessed by anyone who does not have a copy of your electronic key.

Access Data from Last Week or Last Month

Although Active Rescue is designed to protect your data from major disaster events, it can also be essential for the occasional "oops" moment we all have. Every time the connected disk is updated, Active Rescue takes a snapshot, that is an image of your network disk data at a particular moment. Each disk contains daily snapshots for the last seven days, and up to an additional 12 snapshots, one per month for the last year.

If you can't find a file you need, but you are certain you had it yesterday, or just before Easter, open the snapshot calendar, click on the month/day you need and Active Rescue will offer a password protected file share of all your data as it was stored on that day.

Long Term DVD Archive Storage

Active Rescue offers the ability to write your most critical files to recordable DVD storage for long term archiving. Tell the system how to recognise these key files, say "all spreadsheets" or perhaps all files in a folder called "Tax+VAT", drop in a blank recordable DVD disk and Active Rescue will fill the disk with all the matching files starting from those added or modified today and working backwards in time until the DVD is full.

Data on the DVD is stored in a Zip format to compress as many files onto the disk as possible but is not encrypted. Zip is industry standard and readable on Windows, Mac and Linux systems. We do not encrypt the data on the DVD as these disks are intended for long term storage in a secure location.

Rescue after Disaster

If a full disaster should strike, or perhaps you just need access to your data at a second business site:

  • Borrow a PC, laptop or server. (No changes will be made to this system at all.)
  • Insert the rescue DVD and reboot the machine.
  • Attach the USB flash key with the electronic encryption key.
  • Attach one of the off-site portable rescue disks.

In less than 10 minutes the rescue server can now share any of the snapshots on the attached disk to the local network.

As long as the rescue system has an Internet connection you can now start a rescue disk update. The system will access the cloud storage facility and download a copy of all the new files and changed files that were saved after the disk was taken off-site. A new rescue snapshot will be created which merges the latest on disk snapshot with all the cloud updates.

When you have finished recovering any data you need simply remove the rescue DVD and reboot the server and it is back to its previous condition as though nothing had happened.