Before Brush Mountain Data Center, There Was No RAS

I found Doug Mauer’s Turn Your NAS into a RAS a very clever explanation for the services offered by his VT KnowledgeWorks member company Brush Mountain Data Center.

And in the overflowing universe of IT acronyms, in which competition is fierce, Doug Mauer has created an elegant, new set of letters.

Before Brush Mountain Data Center, there was no RAS.

Well, except for Microsoft's RAS, Remote Access Service, but that's so Web 1.0.

During Web 1.0, I very responsibly backed up my mission-critical, small business data on floppy disks once per month and stored them in a safety deposit box at the bank.

Now, during Web 2.0, I back up my mission-critical, VT KnowledgeWorks member company wild and crazy start-up data in an entrepreneurially predictable fashion - not often enough - on a Seagate Free Agent Desktop USB Portable Hard Drive.  It’s the equivalent of a Network Attached Storage device - a NAS.  But I can see it sitting right there on my bookshelf.  My data is not stored off-site.

Brush Mountain Data Center has set up a way to turn my NAS into a RAS. 

Mauer writes in his Brush Mountain Data Center blog, “As a client of Brush Mountain Data Center, for instance, a company can buy an inexpensive commercially available Network Attached Storage (NAS) device and place it in our Data Center for $100 per month."

"This Network Attached Storage, or NAS, is then configured to appear as a local NAS but is securely attached via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel over the Internet. This arrangement can be thought of as a 'Remote Attached Storage (RAS) device.'  So you turn your NAS into a RAS and get the benefits of both.”

Nice, eh?  I buy a NAS and put it in Brush Mountain Data Center.  It looks like my data is still “attached” and on my bookshelf, but it’s really stored off-site, remotely, as a RAS in Brush Mountain Data Center’s “data vault in the mountains.”

Let me see if I understand this.  In doing business with a company led by a guy IT-savvy enough to generate a new IT acronym, I get to extend my responsible business practices?  I protect myself through protecting my company’s data and I protect my ability to serve my clients by having immediate access to that data should anything falter here at mission control?

Remote data backup at Brush Mountain Data Center of my pictures of my cat - I mean of my small and medium business (SMB) start-up's mission critical business data?

I gotta have that.

Brush Mountain Data Center, LLC, specializes in data security and remote data backup services.  Offering server co-location and offsite disaster recovery protection, Brush Mountain Data Center serves as your company’s “data vault in the mountains."

Comments

[Doug Mauer]

Anne,

Thanks for the post. RAS is not a new concept, rather just an easy way to think about something that is important in your business life. We here at Brush Mountain Data Center love to spread around the goodies and educate the masses of small businesses about data security. See http://www.bmdctr.com/service.html for more ideas .

[Jim Flowers]

Educating the masses is a daunting task, but often a necessary one. Neil Sagebiel http://headlinesfromfloyd.com/2009/01/20/william-randolph-hearst-on-social-media/ recently posted a William Randolph Hearst quote on that topic, and I did some cheer leading on my blog, too.http://www.startwithmoxie.com/2009/01/a-path-to-your-door.html