Due to the importance of the topic, I am sending this newsletter to all of our email contacts for CPS customers. If you would like to subscribe to this newsletter please click this link to sign up.

     A line I stole from my dad, not sure where he got it ... "A great communicator does not simply speak/write so that they can be understood. A great communicator speaks/writes so that they CANNOT be misunderstood". Based on the hate mail I received, it seems I failed miserably in my last newsletter. On the plus side, it is reassuring to know that someone actually reads these newsletters I write. Even hate mail is better than no mail.

     First Point: You will NOT be charged automatically for anything. If you clicked through to read the entire newsletter, you would have seen the Exceptions and a Waiver form. Click here to view the waiver. To limit my liability (and your risk) for lost data, I am suggesting that everyone subscribe to the backup service. If you are not willing to do so, then all I ask is that you sign a waiver to acknowledge that you assume the risks involved with doing your own backups. Again: Click here to view the waiver. Waivers will be mailed in our next statement mailing to you. You do not need to do anything at the moment (especially panic).

Second Point: Here is a true story from last Saturday, April, 25, 2009.

6:00 am (eastern time, on one of the first truly nice golf days)

A customer called and left an emergency pager message that said that their server rebooted (not sure if it was a power outage or a windows update thing) and that the server would not restart.

6:10 am

Our on-call emergency tech woke up and called to check the voicemail.

6:15 am

The tech woke up Tom (president of CPS) and explained the situation.

6:30 am

Tom called the GM once he parked his kids in front of a bowl of Cheerios and morning cartoons. The GM at the course described that the server on reboot did not come back up and was at a black screen that said "no hard drive found to boot from!" Assuming this was a hard drive crash (since that is the error message you get when it happens), Tom asked about backup files. The GM said that they had an off-site backup service in place (Yea!!) but... he was not sure of the details. Would find out and call back.

7:00 am (golfers are now wandering in - no POS system available)

GM calls Tom back. Found the contact info for the backup service company. Had to page them as well since it is the weekend.

7:30 am

Backup service company calls and confirms they do indeed have backups; asks which one(s) we want (YEA AGAIN!!)

7:40 am

We determine the latest backup and ask the backup service to "zip up" the file to compress it so we can pull it back.

7:55 am

Tom turns the task back over to our on-call tech who connects with the backup service and starts to transfer the backup to our office for the recover/restore process.

8:15 am

The on-call tech configures an alternate server while waiting on the transfer of the backup (2 hours to transfer the huge backup file).

9:45 am

False Alarm. The course IT staff finally gets onsite. Looks at the server and finds that the boot sequence on the server had been changed to look at the tape drive instead of the hard drive. Configuration of server changed and reboots successfully. POS system back up and running.

     Had we continued with the restore process, it would have been close to noon by the time the data was restored on an alternate server and each client was re-routed to that server. In addition, this would still leave the work of transferring it all back to the club's server once it was fixed (this would be another 4-hour job during off-hours requiring both CPS and Club personnel working overtime).

     Compare that to what would have happened had they used our recommended backup service:

6:00 am (eastern time, on one of the first nice golf days)

A customer called and left an emergency pager message that said that their server rebooted (not sure if it was a power outage or a windows update thing) and that the server would not restart.

6:10 am

Our on-call emergency tech woke up and called to check the voicemail. Tech logs into our backup service portal and downloads the clubs backup (this is high speed and compressed to our office and downloads in 20 minutes).

6:30 am

On-call tech restores the data on our emergency server and re-routs the client POS units to the emergency server.

6:50 am

Club POS System back in operation

     In the meantime, the GM is not running around trying to find backups and IT staff, the POS is NOT down until noon and Tom is watching cartoons with his kids. As you can see, even if you are doing offsite backups, there is a smarter way to work here; but I would be ecstatic just knowing that you do have good offsite files.

     Third Point: Backups are insurance. You don't need it until you need it. However, if you don't have it when you do need it, you're too late, and at that point you would be willing to pay just about anything to have it. Back off one cup of coffee a day to make up the dollar a day I'm asking you to spend. You won't need to stay up late worrying about your data anymore so you don't need the caffeine anyhow!

     Keep that mail (love or hate) coming.

Until Next time,

Enjoy :)