Backup Policy

Table of Contents

• Purpose
• Backup Services
• Enterprise Backups
• Database Backups
• What Backup Services are Included
• Additional Backups Available at an Additional Charge
• How to Request Service or Restore Data
• Where Experienced Users Can Go to Automatically Restore Data Themselves
• How to Best Safeguard your Data
• What We Recommend
• Work that Cannot be Provided

Purpose

The JournalsAndBooks.com, Inc. ("GPowerHost") Backup Policy has been developed with the following objectives:

• To ensure that clients understand our principles of backing up data, and how to best safeguard their data.
• To clearly define what management services are covered under this policy, what would constitute extra service (see: Extra Service Policy & Rates) and what services cannot be provided.
• To detail our support framework–which provides transparency, documenting the issue and detailing its resolution.
• To outline how data is backed up
• To outline where data backup are stored and who has access to the backups
• To outline what data is and isn’t backed up under different Backup Services and your cPanel backup utility.

GPowerHost Backup Services

Our Enterprise, MySQL and PostgreSQL professionally maintained backup services are essential to maintaining a highly available, long-term web presence. Data engineers setup and maintain world class backups ready to restore data at a moment’s notice! Your data is backed up automatically, residing separately and simultaneously at multiple locations on the highest grade redundant disk arrays, protected by hot-standby-replacement drives, with redundant standby power, multiple network connections, all load-balanced to ensure continuous data throughput.

Coupled with excellent service, we encourage regular data-recovery exercises on a scheduled basis; demonstrating that when you needed data restoration we will respond with lightning fast speed. Recovery exercises are available free of charge on up to a quarterly basis for any one year plus retention plan and are reasonably priced for any plan at any time–even unscheduled surprise drills are welcome! No other hosting company out there takes data replication so seriously.

Our Enterprise backup services are designed to backup and restore any file, your entire site, email, and configuration files as well. While databases are also backed up, you should select an MySQL or PostgreSQL Backup service plan for true error free replication (available on Enterprise plans with six months plus retention periods). Database backups require specialized methodology to ensure that a truly integral snap-shot is achieved without significantly slowing down live sites. For mission critical operations, our expertly executed idea® Continuous Data Protection® based service continuously archives your data with near-real-time data-mirroring–always ready to restore to the moment before the disaster. Additionally, plans offer instantly accessible restore points extending back two years and beyond! Rest assured, your older backups are not stored on tape or other offline, slow to access media.

All of our backup products are fully managed, and if needed, customers can access and recover files on their own! However, that is never required, as we have dedicated, backup, recovery teams around-the-clock at data centers ready to execute your recovery support requests quickly. The recovery process follows good-practice, allowing instant restoration roll-backs and immediate, successive, recovery point restorations as needed.

All hosting packages come with one day website, email, and configuration backup service included free! This minimal protection is designed to cover only immediate disasters and most hardware failures. We strongly encourage everyone to purchase a greater level of protection and have plans and plan combinations offering absolute database recovery points and longer retention periods starting at just $3 per month!

Here are two products matrices showing our Enterprise and Database focused products:

Remember that database backups require different technology, methodology and specialized expertise to be truly useful and reliable! Any site that has databases needs database backups or the recovery could have transactional errors.

What Backup Services are Included

We will gladly help you plan your backup strategy and maintain your professional set of backups included in the cost of any backup service plan. Recovery exercises are available free of charge on up to a quarterly basis for any one year plus retention plan, and include up to 1/4 hour of an engineer’s time. Data restoration events include 1/2 hour of an engineer’s time, which is generally sufficient. Additional time will be billed at our Expert Webmaster Administration rates ranging between $40-$80 per hour (see: Managed Extra Services Policy). If a restoration event is a result of a virus or other malware infection, the customer is required to have the incursion investigated and certified as fully recovered and the means of entry further prevented. Expert Anti-Virus Investigations are not included and will be billed at the prevailing rates ranging between $40-$60 per hour (see: Managed Extra Services Policy). If a data disaster is a result of corrupted data caused by a poorly performing website script or application, the problem may have to be investigated and the script/app. may need to be repaired or replaced. Script investigation, alterations, or repair are be billed at our Expert Webmaster Administration rates ranging between $40-$80 per hour (see: Managed Extra Services Policy).

Additional Backups Available at an Additional Charge

IMPORTANT NOTICE!

Because customers are often ill-prepared for data disasters, we reserve the right to make backups available beyond the retention period you have selected. This data may be available from your client area. IF YOU RESTORE, DOWNLOAD, OPEN OR OTHERWISE MAKE VIEWABLE ANY ARCHIVED FILE ON THE GPOWERHOST ENTERPRISE BACKUP SYSTEM, THAT IS OUTSIDE THE RETENTION PERIOD YOU HAVE CONTRACTED FOR, YOU WILL BE CHARGED BASED ON THIS SCHEDULE: (customer choice, open a support ticket in advance or be charged the highest rate!)

• 3 months past service (if you agree to upgrade your backup plan going forward on a year contract, you will be charged for 3 months of past service to access and additional data archives).
• $50 per file (plus prevailing rates ranging between $40-$60 per hour (see: Managed Extra Services Policy) if we restore data for you).
• $250 flat fee (plus prevailing rates ranging between $40-$60 per hour (see: Managed Extra Services Policy) if we restore data for you).

Please be advised that we only make this data available as we have it and are under no obligation to store or make backups beyond your contracted retention period. Be further advised that if you see additional retention backups one day the backups may be deleted at any time. In fact, we regularly clean house and the first data we delete is data that we are not contracted to retain. Additionally, just because the additional retention data is listed as being present, doesn’t mean that it is complete and fully restorable. Data retained within your contracted retention period is thoroughly verified daily, and is replicated to multiple geographic data locations for added redundancy. Data outside your retention period is actually data that is scheduled for deletion, and is no longer actively tracked for data integrity checks. It is highly likely that the data exists in one location only and might be only partially available or even already deleted. It is best practice to subscribe to the data retention plan that meets your needs and carries our support.

You will be charged to retrieve and restore data archives beyond your data retention period whether or not the data is fully intact or incomplete (unusable). The data retained within your retention period is easy for us to verify as complete because we maintain records as to their integrity, this data may not be available for expired retention archives. When you order restoration via a support ticket, we will notify you first if we do not have integrity records. In all cases, if you receive a file you will be charged.

How to Request Service or Restore Data

To ensure rapid and accurate service we require all restoration requests be initiated via our specialized Backup Support Trouble Ticket System. To open a service request for immediate action login to your client support area and click "Open Ticket" then "Support – Backup" (or visit this link: https://gpowerhost.com/gpower-support/ ).

Be prepared to supply:

• Your account password
• Details of what data you need restored
• The point in time you want your data restored to
• Why you need data restored (corruption, missing files, suspected virus/malware etc.)
• How can we contact you by phone if needed

Failure to provide detailed information can result in longer restoration times, incorrect data being restored, and/or cause you to exceed your 1/2 hour included engineer’s time allotment resulting in charges for Expert Webmaster Administration at rates ranging between $40-$80 per hour (see: Managed Extra Services Policy http://GPowerHost.com/super-service).

Where Experienced Users Can Go to Automatically Restore Data Themselves

Optionally customers can request a scheduled, automated system restoration of files by logging into their control panel and clicking on the "R1Soft Restore Backups" icon and logging into the R1Soft system using their control panel account username and password (if required). We cannot be responsible for mistakes made, or errors that occur, when using the self-service restoration link in their control panel. Data outside your retention period may exist there and you will be charged $250 if you access it (without any further notice!). No engineer or support personnel will see your request, review it for accuracy, backup the environment in case the restoration does not result in the desired effect. We cannot train you in its proper operation, as this is a tool intended to be used by experienced users with familiarity and training in R1Soft data replication and recovery. You have been warned! Once scheduled, the system will restore the data within five minutes to five hours (as soon as the system can automatically schedule and run the operation in queue with other scheduled operations). Once scheduled a task may not be canceled.

How to Best Safeguard your Data

As stated in our Terms of Service:

"Customer agrees to maintain a current copy of all content hosted by GPowerHost notwithstanding any agreement by GPowerHost to provide backup services."

Question: If GPowerHost sells reliable, professional grade hosting, cares about its customer’s data and sells additional backup services, why do we say customer must maintain their own backups? Answer: Because we are honest and care to reveal what others avoid emphasizing: You are ultimately responsible for your data and, despite the best practices and our world class data centers, given our vast resources, with multiple protective, redundant, backup layers, locations and systems–data can always be lost! We hope that our efforts help you avoid serious data loss, we cannot, however, be responsible in the event that you lose data–even if it is a result of our error, neglect, action, or inaction!

The fact is that the more well planned you are for various kinds of data disasters the better your odds of minimizing data loss, recovery time and your financial risk.

We think the best plan is to minimally heed the widespread advice: Backup, Backup, Backup! That is: three distinct sets of backups, in three different locations, all maintained and verified independently from one another. If some or all of those independent backup plans have built in redundancy, so much the better. However, just because a backup system might be triple redundant (like our Enterprise Backup Service) that doesn’t in itself qualify as all three backups. It still counts as one.

What We Recommend to Our Customers

1. Use a professional backup service like our Enterprise Backup Service, our MySQL/PostgreSQL Backup Services, or our Continuous Data Protection® services. Be sure to consider all of your data streams and types: website files, databases, logs, email, passwords, configuration files and the like. This should be your primary, most complete and most reliable backup. Your backup of first resort! In case you need it, this should quickly restore everything you have lost and be the most up-to-date. It is extremely unlikely that this data will just disappear. To view your backup volumes, browse their contents or to restore files click on the "R1Soft Restore Backups" icon in your control panel, and login using your control panel account username and password.
2. Login to your control panel and use the built-in self-service backup utilities to take periodic secondary backups, downloaded to your own secure, virus-free computer. To backup everything use our self-service "Backup Wizard" or selectively backup make partial backups of just the data you want by clicking on the control panel "Backup" icon. Return on a scheduled basis to continue to make self-service backups as required based on how often your data changes.
3. Maintain copies of all of your original websites and databases yourself. Keep the files safe and updated as you make changes. Depending on how often your data changes and if your website content changes based on other things such as visitor input, these backup may or may not be able to fully restore all your data. This is considered your backup of last resort.

With option #1 above, having professional backups in place, customers are generally well protected. Close to 80% of all data loss events are covered this way. But that isn’t good enough! Options #2 and #3 protect against many other scenarios including:

• When customers make moves and changes, such as changing hosting companies, upgrading software, or making other "big moves" a simple mistake can leave you hanging. Normally accustomed to professional backups, these vulnerable times are among the most common periods of catastrophic data loss. Therefore, it is wise to pay for overlapping service, leave old software live and leave old databases intact during times of change, until you are certain you are protected in your new environment.
• Failure to pay for service and/or intentional or unintentional service cancellations are a common points of vulnerability. People tend to not plan for these seemingly unlikely events, but if you read posts on the internet, you will find many folks who lost their data this way. In this event, only options #2 and #3 will protect you!
• Human error is always a factor. Sometimes you think that it is OK to delete something, cancel or change your primary backups in some way, only to discover later that you really need them. Commonly, customers decide to save a few bucks or get eager when deleting old backups. Make sure you have sufficient long-term backups and be certain to carefully plan cleanups.
• Sometimes data problems don’t become apparent for a long time. Slowly corrupting data in reports or features that are seldom used (think year end reports, from a year ago) may not be noticed until it is too late. Restoring or rebuilding that data can mean going way back to backups you were certain you no longer needed. Having a solid long-term data recovery plan that may extend beyond your option #1 retention periods can be helpful.
• Sometimes professional data backups fail. You must always consider this. Professional backups, while expertly made and maintained can have hidden faults unique to your situation because customers are unlikely to regularly review their professional stores, and experts are sometimes not knowledgeable enough about what a customer’s data situation. It is best for the customer to regularly inspect the professional backups to ensure that the data they need are being backed up and the backups they are getting are the backups they need. Closely monitoring archives or regular restoration tests followed by close inspection of the results are a good way to keep a pulse on the health of your backup strategy.

Feel free to ask for guidance and help when designing your backup strategy. Or speak with us and we will design one for you! We hope you never lose data in the first place–we have customers every day that request emergency data restorations from our expertly maintained Enterprise, MySQL and PostgreSQL backups–they are the lucky ones! Other customers wait until the data are gone before asking "Are we protected?

Work that Cannot be Provided

Migration of a prior-host’s site/account/reseller/server backups into our Enterprise Backup System is generally not possible. Even if we can import your prior backups, we can’t be sure that they were maintained properly, or created in a way that makes them readily usable by us. Discovery of these incompatibilities might not be apparent until it is too late. Therefore, we can only guarantee and service the data stores that we archive.

This is a guideline, in the event of a conflict in statements, concepts, policies or rules the GPowerHost Terms of Service and AUP apply.