How to Keep Local Access to Your Data During Cloud Outages

The Amazon mottle services outage that knocked taboo several popular Websites last week raised questions about the reliability of the mottle, but the general consensus is that it works if you plan for failure. Ilk any virtuous business plan, a good cloud plan should include provisions for failure, including plans B and C, and plenty of backups.

The majority of advice coming out of this particular outage is focused on redundance, doubled data centers, and failure plans. Place setting up (Oregon even buying into) multiple data centers may not be possible when you'Re a littler concern, but you can be after against failure and keep redundant localized backups additionally to your cloud storage so that you will always have entree, even when the cloud goes out.

Cloud backup services are great. They allow for easy and inexpensive offsite storage for your data. But what if you need your information right now, and Internet access is slow or down? Make a point to choose a cloud service with a good companion desktop application that will sync local copies of your files with the cloud up. It's important to hang along to those local copies. Check come out of the closet some of the best online storage services for small business, and take note of which ones have good screen background clients. These tools will allow you to work with topical anaestheti versions of your files, syncing changes clog to the cloud, and down again to collaborators.

Google Docs used to offer this feature article through Google Gears, merely has since rotated it off with promises of bringing it back implemented in HTML5. That will be respectable, simply what about directly? The Google Mottle Connect plug-in for Microsoft Government agency syncs local Billet files to Google's servers. (There's also Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.)

And BusyDocs offers a simple way to proceed and edit local versions of your Google Docs files, while syncing you changes choke to the defile. It is for Windows only, however, and temporarily unavailable while they work happening stellar changes for the new version.

Syncplicty is a more robust tool that runs happening some Macs and Windows PCs, likewise every bit syncing with file servers and Google Docs. There are also iPhone and Android apps available for data get at from smartphones. Syncplicity has much tools for multi-user and cooperative environments also. They store your data centrally on their servers, in accession to the local copies on your auto, making for a decent backup system when the cloud is up.

Microsoft provides many cloud-syncing services that leave you with local anaesthetic copies besides. OneNote whole caboodle especially symptomless with notes that can sync to the cloud. Changes push almost instantly across multiple machines connected to the same cloud-synced notebook, and the notebooks continue in full function offline. There is also a young OneNote app for the iPhone, to boot to the Windows Phone 7 app, which will let you view notebooks from a French telephone. Unluckily, neither the iPhone app nor the Web app will display ink notes. If you like to take notes in ink, you'll need the Windows screen background application to view them.

Then course, there's also Evernote, which runs on PCs, Macs, iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets, and maybe even your toaster–Okay, maybe not the last one. Evernote is a neat tool if you find yourself needing access to information on a variety of different platforms. You lavatory share Notes, although you'll need a insurance premium account to allow others to edit themBrowser extensions for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari will take Web clippings straight into a new note. You bottom also create audio, video, picture, and text notes from anywhere. The Windows client likewise has an ink notes option–with notes that are still viewable on the changeful versions, unlike OneNote's ink notes.

You still need to back files topically for the sake of redundancy. Cloud backups are one great agency to pass wate trustworthy your files are safely off of your computer in case something happens to it, but it's likewise good to suffer quick access to topical anaestheti hard drives that likewise contain copies of your files. (Read more about backup strategies to organize your data based on the size and case of reliever solutions you'll need to keep them safe.)

For simple file backups, all you postulate is an outward private road and extraordinary good backing software. In caseful you pauperism a full system pictur, check out this article on cloning your hard drive. When you penury many blank space than on-line hard drives go, or merely want the safety of redundancy, consider a RAID set up, or a NAS system if you reliance your local network more than the cloud.

The cloud offers umteen advantages, so much as syncing information across ternary machines and platforms, coaction among multiple users, and easy to use hit-site backups. But when the cloud goes down you need redundancy, redundance, redundancy. Nominate sure that everything you trust to the cloud, you too keep a hold of locally.

When complete else fails, you can always just abuse away from the computer, walk over to the coffee betray, grab some caffeine and snacks, and just hang out with people until cloud access returns.

Michelle Mastin has been a freelance musician and teacher since leaving conservatories pentad years ago, and a hobby nerd for all of her 30 years. Watch classical and gadgets collide at her blog, or follow her connected Chirrup @violajack.