| Huge prizes • Lots of fun • Beat my times |
Modern cyber-resilience is all about the recovery. The first thing a system administrator asks is, “what options do I have if a disaster strikes?”
Having options is the key. A good backup system must provide multiple ways of recovery, to suit different situations. And that’s what this challenge is all about!
We will be crowning the 2020 BA Cyber-resilience Champion!
To coincide with the launch of BackupAssist ER – our finest backup and recovery solution to date – we’re launching a unique challenge to our partners and all MSPs in general.
Using BackupAssist ER, how fast can you recover from the following backup situation?
- Locally, by booting the backup as a Virtual Machine
- Locally via a full bare metal recovery (re-image your disks)
- Cloud based Virtual Machine Disaster Recovery
- Just for fun – think up an extreme recovery scenario, just to see if it’s possible
I took the challenge myself in April / May 2020, and in this series of blogs, I’ll share my experiences and results. There’s also bonus video footage of my recoveries, and documenting the steps taken so anyone can follow and repeat.
How did I do?
Despite being under lockdown in Australia, I had enough hardware at home to do a “disk to disk to cloud” backup, and then 4 different types of recoveries.
| Backup Process | Hands-on time | Waiting Time | Total Time to Backup |
| Disk to disk to cloud backup | 4 min 51 secs | 162 min 0 secs | 166 min 51 secs |
| Recovery Process | Hands-on time | Waiting Time | Total Time to Recovery |
| Local VM Instant Boot | 3 min 52 secs | 2 min 25 secs | 6 min 17 secs |
| Local Bare Metal Recovery | 3 mins 13 secs | 7 min 57 secs | 11 min 10 secs |
| Cloud VM Disaster Recovery | 7 min 58 secs | 37 min 07 secs | 71 min 32 secs |
| Extreme: VMware BMR on a Mac | 2 min 40 secs | 22 min 37 secs | 25 min 17 secs |
Total hands on 1 Backup + 4 scenarios Recovery Time = 22 min 34 secs
I’m convinced! anyone can beat my results!
The aim of BackupAssist ER is to enable system administrators of all skill levels to perform predictable and successful recoveries.
As a system administrator, I’m definitely at the novice end of the spectrum!
I first set up my first tape backup on Windows NT 4.0 some 20 years ago and technology has changed so much since then. Prior to this challenge, I had never even signed up for an Azure storage account or spun up an Azure VM.
So I’m convinced, anyone can beat my times. Even if you need to do a practice run beforehand, that’s fine. Elite athletes practise – and so should elite I.T. administrators! Just record your best run.
Enter the challenge yourself and win some big prizes!
Don’t take my word for it. Try it for yourself. Get yourself on the leaderboard, and maybe you’ll be crowned the 2020 BA Cyber-Resilience Champion.
Our overall Champion will be able to recover:
- locally (on-premise) and in the cloud,
- to virtual and physical hardware.
Because different people will be backing up and recovering different amounts of data, we’re only considering the hands-on time with BackupAssist ER. We’ll disregard the waiting time – that is, time it takes to wait for data to be transferred. And we’ll also disregard any time taken to provision cloud machines.
 The Recovery Specialist
Given to the first 25 entries who perform any type of recovery. For example, if you perform all 4 recoveries on Day 1 of the challenge, it’s likely you’ll win 4 of these awards. |  2020 BA Cyber-Resilience Champion
Awarded to the person who achieves the most number of categories of recoveries – up to a maximum of 4. If there’s a tie-break, the winner will be awarded on fastest overall hands-on time. |
 The Recovery Speed Daemon
to the two fastest recoveries in each category. |
 Awarded to the most “extreme” type of recovery, designed to push the boundaries of what you normally think is possible. | ||
Yes, the same person can win multiple prizes!
In fact, the overall Cyber-Resilience Champion can even win:
- The overall grand prize ($1000),
- Up to 4 Speed Daemon prizes (4 x $300),
- Up to 4 Recovery Specialist prizes (4 x $100),
- The Extreme Eagle prize ($100)
That’s a total of up to $2,700 in prizes
I can’t wait to see the results
I know one thing about our BackupAssist partners – they are extremely good at what they do. So I can’t wait to see how fast, and creative you can be when taking the challenge. And this challenge is open to any bona-fide MSP – even if you are not currently a partner with us. Just fill out the entry form, download the software, and away you go! And read my next blog: BackupAssist ER Challenge – disk to disk to cloud recovery
Until next time,
Linus
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