LINUX -UNIX Data Recovery:

Another reason why PulseRecovery continues to achieve such an impeccable success rate is its team of Exchange server specialists. This team of experts have acquired extensive knowledge of recovering data from terabyte servers, like those used by large financial institutions, for example the City Group. UniRecovery has also developed, in collaboration with Pulse Technologies, a very unique and high-tech recovery tool for exchange servers.

Fileservers, Application Servers, Mail Servers, Web Servers, NAS devices (Quantum SNAP, Dell Power Vault etc..) and just plain Servers form the backbone of many corporations' business records storage. There may be one hard drive or many, configured together in volumes spanning drives or striped across drives, on permanent hard drives or removable media.

Windows NT and Windows 2000 are the most popular Operating Systems for servers today but we see many NetWare, Apple, Solaris, HPUX, and linux servers as well. UniRecovery Data Recovery Labs technicians are intimately familiar with server hardware from IBM, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Sun hardware as well as numerous others.

1. Examples of Data Loss Situations - UNIX / Linux

 

Naturally, the individual media in Servers suffer from the same failure points as do drives in personal computers and workstations.

The increased complexity of many server operating systems results in additional loss situations:

  • Server registry configuration lost
  • Intermittent drive failure resulting in configuration corruption
  • Multiple drive failure
  • Accidental replacement of media components

2. The Recovery Process

 

PulseRecovery Data Recovery Labs technicians treat Server and RAID loss situations as high priority cases. An initial diagnosis determines whether each media device is accessible to our lab equipment. If so, the first priority is to create a raw image of all data from accessible media onto UniRecovery media so that logical analysis can determine the nature of the data loss situation.

If some of the media is inaccessible our lab will test the components and closely examine its internal health to determine the extent of physical damage.

Recovery of crashed hard disks often involves replacing failed or damaged components in a clean environment and using specialized hardware and software tools to create the raw image. Failed components typically include electronics, read/write heads, head assemblies, magnets & drive motors.

Logical recovery uses the raw images of all the server's media by examining the low-level data sectors. Technicians must determine both the exact layout of volumes which span or are striped across multiple drives and what fixes to filesystem structures are needed to get access to the important data.

Multiple-drive servers are typically 'destriped' onto PulseRecovery media so that filesystem repairs can be performed and the data files extracted. Sometimes the existing filesystem structures are missing or damaged so much that data has to be extracted directly from one or more fragments of the destriped image.

PulseRecovery Data Recovery Labs programmers have created a full set of software tools used by our technicians to analyze, destripe, fix & recover data from raw image drives from all operating systems. Once a recovery has been successfully performed, file lists are created and data validity is checked.


3. Recovery Pricing for UNIX / Linux Servers

 

PulseRecovery's Labs have recovered from thousands of these devices over the years. As you may expect, no two data recovery scenarios are identical in all respects. Therefore, this uniqueness makes it impossible to give a realistic indication of pricing without knowing all the facts for a particular case. Generally speaking, pricing starts at about £1000.00 and goes up from this point.

Over the phone, our highly trained Customer Service Consultants will be able to give you some idea of what pricing you would be looking at given your particular configuration and set of circumstances. Sending in your media for a no obligation evaluation will give us all of the information we would require to give you a firm quotation for the recovery of your data.


4. Turn-Around Time

 

PulseRecovery has geared its entire service to recover your data as fast as possible. When dealing with such a wide variety of problems, estimating time before the problem is diagnosed is difficult. That is why, each recovery case starts with a free evaluation.

The free evaluation is started immediately on receipt of the media and generally takes 2 to 48 hours to complete. The process involves several hours of work and testing.

Complete recovery turn-around time including analysis and recovery is usually between 1 and 5 days. Some severe cases can take considerably more time.

Our hours of operation are 9am to 7pm Monday to Friday (All Labs), 9am to 5pm Saturday. If you have an emergency situation, we have technical staff on call for weekends and after hours in all locations.

Time estimates are based on procedures and expertise required to recover the data you require. You are not charged by the hour. A firm quote is provided for your approval following the evaluation.



5. Operating Systems and File Systems

 

Intel Platforms

Unix Operating systems including:
SCO OpenServer and Xenix,
UnixWare from Novell and SCO,
Solaris,
Linux with ext2fs, xfs, reiserfs & jfs filesystems on standalone & RAID volumes,
BSD-based systems such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, BSDI,
LynxOS,
QNX.

Non-Intel Platforms

Unix Systems including:
Solaris on Sun/SPARC equipment, with ufs and Veritas VxFS filesystems
HPUX on Hewlett-Packard workstations with hfs and Veritas VxFS filesytems on standalone and LVMvolumes,
IRIX on SGI workstations with efs and xfs filesystems,
VMS & OpenVMS running on Compaq & DEC equipment using ODS filesystems,
AIX on IBM RS/6000 with jfs filesystems on LVM volumes.


. This allows PulseRecovery to provide you with the following service: 

  • Collection of your damaged hardware (a supplementary cost may be charged depending on your location).
  • NO FIX NO FEE: no charge if your data cannot be recovered!
  • A Door to Door collection & delivery all included in our service.
  • to charge a FIXED Rates for the recovery of your data irrespective of the time it takes to recover.
  • On receipt, the allocation of two qualified engineers dedicated solely to retrieving your data. As far as possible, they will work around the clock in order to achieve the speediest recovery
  • Extensive expertise in dealing with many problems like yours on servers, and specialised high technology to best carry out the recovery
  • Non-intrusive technologies which guarantee the integrity of data and hardware are not compromised
  • Retrieval of data in highly controlled environments (Clean Rooms Class 1000, Class 100 and Class 10 are only ever used)
  • The shortest turn-around time achievable: 6 hours - 3 days depending on the extent of the damage and the size of the hardware
  • Return of all your recovered data on a brand new hard disk (either supplied by you, or by PulseRecovery at an agreed cost).

All About Recovery Planning: Why Plan?
The primary objective of a Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery Plan is to enable an organization to survive a disaster and to re-establish normal business operations.


In order to survive, the organization must assure that critical operations can resume normal processing within a reasonable time frame. Therefore, the goals of the Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Plan should be to:  
  • Identify weaknesses and implement a disaster prevention program
  • Minimize the duration of a serious disruption to business operations
  • Facilitate effective coordination of recovery tasks
  • Reduce the complexity of the recovery effort.
  • Please check PulseRecovery's fixed Prices and follow their experts advice on What To Do Next or call Free
    0800 0 439 549

Historically, the data processing function alone has been assigned the responsibility for providing continuity planning through a Disaster Recovery Plan, typically associated only with recovery of IT functionality. Frequently, this has led to the development of recovery plans to restore computer resources in a manner that is not fully responsive to the needs of the business supported by those resources.

Business continuity planning is more comprehensive with a business operations focus rather than a data processing focus. In the past year, it has become clear that disaster recovery must include a business process oriented business impact analysis and a determination of what other systems are required to operate, such as: paper forms, skilled and knowledgeable people, special equipment, communications systems, work space and inventory.

In today's environment, the effects of long-term operations outage may have a catastrophic impact. The development of a viable recovery strategy must, therefore, be a product not only of the provider's of the organization's data processing, communications and operations centre services, but also the users of those services and management personnel who have responsibility for the protection of the organization's assets.

The methodology used to develop the plans, emphasize the following key points:  
  • Providing management with a comprehensive understanding of the total effort required to develop and maintain an effective recovery plan
  • Obtaining commitment from appropriate management to support and participate in the effort
  • Defining recovery requirements from the perspective of business functions
  • Documenting the impact of an extended loss to operations and key business functions
  • Focusing appropriately on disaster prevention and impact minimization, as well as orderly recovery
  • Selecting project teams that ensure the proper balance required for plan development
  • Developing a continuity plan that is understandable, easy to use and easy to maintain; and
  • Defining how continuity planning considerations must be integrated into ongoing business planning and system development processes in order for the plan to remain viable over time.

The successful and cost effective completion of such a project requires the close cooperation of management from all areas of Information Systems as well as business areas supported by Information Systems. Senior personnel from Information Systems and user areas must be significantly involved throughout the project for the planning process to be successful.

What if I Don’t Plan?  
  • Loss of business if a disaster occurs - A recent group study found that:
    • 70% of companies that suffer a major IT disaster, without a valid recovery plan in place, fail within the next year.
    • Of those that do survive, only 10% make a full recovery.
  • With out a plan, recovery is guaranteed to be slower, resulting in:
    • Loss of customers
    • Lost sales revenue
    • Loss of shareholder confidence
  • Without a plan, recovery is always more expensive
  • Investors will require it
  • Protection of directors from liability concerns
  • SEC requires it for public companies
  • Numerous regulations require planning (see the Knowledge Base at www.DisasterRecovery.com)
  • NFPA standard 1600 may soon be law, which will require a written plan for all companies and buildings (similar to Y2K plan requirements for all business to have a written plan)

What do You Mean by a Disaster?

This is a typical question, based on the thought “What kind of disaster would I possibly need to plan for?” A disaster is defined as any event, which disrupts operations to the point of having a significant interruption of service or operation with a resulting negative impact, such as:

  • Storm
  • Fire
  • Employee Strike
  • Tornado
  • Hurricane
  • Flood
  • Malicious employee damages systems
  • Hardware failure
  • Software failure
  • Virus
  • Theft or robbery
  • Implement a Plan

In closing, it is important to keep in mind that the aim of the planning process is to:

  • Assess existing vulnerabilities
  • Implement disaster avoidance and prevention procedures; and
  • Develop a comprehensive plan that will enable the organization to react appropriately and in a timely manner if disaster strikes.

Plan your response to a disaster. Disasters do not come with advanced warning and thinking it all through in advance and preparing a written procedural response to business resumption and recovery is the only prudent and responsible course of action.

A written, well-prepared Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan is an absolute must for business success in our world today.
Dale Windle

Our Laboratories : PulseRecovery Guarantees :

 

As a single speck of dust entering a hard disk could cause fatal results. It is larger than the distance between the read/write heads and the platter in a hard disk (40 microns, a human hair being 100 microns thick) and its collision with the Hard Disk head would be extremely detrimental.


Our advanced laboratories are equipped with Clean Rooms rated as ‘Class 1000, 100 & 10 ’ where there exists no more than 1000 particles; and ‘Class 100’ where there exists no more than 100 particles whereas with "Class 10", less than 10 particles of 0,5 µm found in our Cabim-Flow which is of "Class 10".

The air quality of the Clean Rooms complies with the applicable standards BS 5295, ISO 14644-4 and Federal Standard 209. Hard disk fabrication requires a ‘Class 100’ Clean Room and UniRecovery undertake all laptop hard drive recovery work in Clean Rooms ‘Class 10’. Commonly established, recovery from “Clicking” hard disk drives, can also be achieved under these specialised Clean Room conditions.

  1. NO FIX, NO FEE : no charge if your data cannot be recovered!
  2. to charge Fixed Rates for the recovery of your data irrespective of the cost & time it takes to recover.
  3. Door to Door collection & delivery all included in our fixed rates.
  4. To recover all recoverable data.
  5. Rapid Respond : in order to get you back up and running with the shortest possible delay.
  6. To maintain the highest standard of work environment with the use of Clean rooms within all our laboratories, in which air quality complies with the applicable standards BS 5295, ISO 14644-4 and Federal Standard 209.
  7. Extensive experience and expertise in recovering data from ‘inaccessible’ hard drives.
  8. Data recovery from SCSI, RAID s, SANs or NASs servers, Mirrored and Striped Volume, Exchange Servers, RAID or NAS servers, backup tapes, floppy diskettes, Zip, Optical Media.
  9. Complete discretion with regards to client data protection.
  10. A specialist team of RAID server qualified data recovery engineers.
  11. Free post-recovery customer services: providing you with measures to prevent similar losses in the future.
  12. Recovery (if the data is recoverable) solutions for data loss caused by power surges, software or system malfunction, lightening, fires, floods, sabotage, user errors, accidental format, deletion, repartitioning.
  13. A specialist team of forensic data recovery experts for litigation cases.