BCS Cloud Tip of the Day - How to Backup Your Pictures

I am sure I am not the only one who has a digital camera these days.  To the same note, I am sure I am not the only one that has accumulated a fairly large picture library that is filled with precious family moments, wedding pictures, baby pictures, and all manner of other pictures that basically sums of the timeline of my life.  If this picture library were to disappear due to a hard drive failure or perhaps something even worse like a fire, I would be devastated and I'm sure my wife would cry and then most likely try to strangle me.  All of you that are computer geeks and/or work in the industry know that best practices state that you need to have a local copy and an offsite copy of all your critical data to reduce the risk of data loss due to the scenarios I mentioned above.  The down side of this methodology is it involves a fair amount of work to ensure your backups stay current and viable.  

I can read your minds and I know what you are thinking..."this issue has been solved already with services like Carbonite, Mozy, iDrive, etc."  You are correct, there are a lot of really great online backup services that do a really good job of backing up your most precious data and keeping it current.  The down side is you now have another service to learn, maintain and pay for.  There is another option that you might not have considered for backups.

Google Docs/Google Drive!

The most recent release of Google Drive adds a "Dropbox" like functionality to Google Docs allowing you to sync  your Google Docs to a folder on you hard drive.  The really interesting part that makes Google Drive a viable backup tool is that it sync's in both directions.  This means that anything that get's placed in the Google Drive folder will get synced to you online Google Docs library.  If you don't know what Google Docs/Google Drive is and have a gmail account, log into your gmail account and look in the upper left section of your browser.  You should see something like this:

Click on the link that says "Drive" or "Documents" and you will be taken to your Google document library that comes with your gmail account.  It's a very powerful tool and worth the time to click around and explore a little.  

"Why would I want to use Google Drive as a backup tool?"

1. Google Storage is cheap.  Here is a link to see the Google Storage pricing structure.
2. Not only will all your pictures get backed up but you can now use all the sharing features in Google Drive to share pictures with family and friends.
3. There is no backup job that needs to run.  If its in the Google Drive folder it gets backed up.  Simple!
4. It's familiar!  If you use gmail and Google Docs/Drive you will feel right at home.  
5. You can backup Raw picture files which is something  you can't do in photo editing tools like Picasa that offer online sync capabilites.

Here is how to use Google Drive as a backup tool:

1. Get Google Drive setup by going here and then installing the Google Drive desktop application.  
2. Move your picture library into you Google Drive folder.  I use Adobe Lightroom and there are lots of great articles on how to move your library.  It's pretty simple.  You might not use a tool like Lightroom to manage your pictures so the spirit of this step is to make sure that all new pictures get imported to your Google Drive folder.  This is important because as long as you are importing your pictures to your Google Drive folder there is nothing else you need to do in terms of backups.  Just import your pictures and Google Drive does the rest.  Caveat: if you picture library is 5 GB and under then there is nothing else you need to do.  If you are like me and have a rather large picture library you will need to purchase additional storage.  Use the link above to buy additional storage. Additional storage can be used by Gmail and Picasa as well as other Google applications.  It's pretty cool.
3.  Start shooting pictures and importing them as usual and watch them appear in your new online picture library.  DONE!

BONUS:

You can install Google Drive on multiple computers which means that as you import pictures all your other computers with Google Drive installed will be updated with the new pictures.  This is especially awesome if you use Adobe Lightroom in multiple locations because not only will your pictures be in sync but so will your edit library.  RAD!  This means that if you use Lightroom at home and work your edits and changes will show up in both locations.  

I hope you find this helpful and can sleep in piece knowing that your pictures are backed up and safe.  

Come back often as we will continue to post cool tips and tricks!

-Jason

Cloud Computing (What is it, Why its good)

With the emergence of Cloud Computing many companies are missing the true benefits of Cloud Computing and what Cloud Computing can offer companies of all sizes.  In order to realize what Cloud Computing is and what it can do for your company, you need to understand its characteristics and the benefits Cloud Computing offers.

Cloud Computing, what is it?  In a more technical term, Cloud Computing is a specialized form of distributed computing that provides utilization models for remotely provisioning scalable and measured IT resources.  WHAT?

Exactly!  Cloud Computing is essentially the ability for companies to have access to IT Resources, i.e. virtual servers, storage, network devices, etc, as needed, when needed, be able to expand or decrease those IT resources as needed, while only paying for the IT resources used.

To further explain, we will review some of the basic characteristic of Cloud Computing which demonstrate the benefits your company gains by leveraging Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing emerged from business drivers and advancements in technology.  Business drivers were driven by costs associated with the need to reduce money spent on capacity planning, operating overhead, and need for business agility.  Virtualization led the way for technology advancements, along with the ability to pool, or group together IT resources, to provide more stable and reliable IT environments.

The first characteristic we will look at is On-Demand.  On-Demand, in Cloud Computing, means setting up IT resources, (i.e. virtual servers, storage devices, network devices, etc.) in such a way the systems can scale as needed, based on the demand required.  

A simple example:   Lets say Beacon Cloud Solutions has setup and configured a Web-Server to host your Company’s website.  Currently you average about 1000 visits a day but because of a recent promotion, you expect visits to jump to about 1,000,000 for the next two months.

Prior to the Cloud you would need to buy additional servers to handle the increase in visits.  So now you have more servers.  That requires hardware purchases, software purchases, labor to configure the new servers, maintenance for the new servers, and it all run on electricity all day everyday, right?  Plus, once the promotion is over, you now have idle servers!!

With the Cloud characteristic of On-Demand, you configure a single virtual server that scales.    You know that during normal business hours websites visits will increase and during off hours visits will decrease.  This means, a single virtual server is running your website, as visits increase, additional virtual server turns on and so on. Supporting your website's performance and reliability.  As visits decrease the virtual servers turn off back down to the original virtual server.  The Cloud has been configured to detect the increases and decreases in site visits and only runs the necessary IT resources to support your website.  Why pay for something you don’t need, right? 
 
The benefits gained are reliability, performance,  and reduced costs!  Your website is always up and able to handle any increase in site visits.  Reduced cost, because you only pay for when the systems are turned on and running.  There is no more need to pay for new hardware equipment or software licenses, you just pay for the setup and for the time it was used.  Truly a cost saver!


Stay tuned for additional benefits regarding Cloud Computing and if you or you company has any questions, contact Beacon Cloud Solutions, Inc. at info@beaconcloudsolutions.com