By Bill Harnett, RBS Inc.

CHERRY VALLEY, N.Y. - Sooner or later, you're bound to face this problem: What do you do when your computer system fails?

At RBS, we get at least one call every month where there has been a computer hardware failure. This can occur for any number of reasons: a network is unprotected from viruses and spyware and has become unstable; a lightning strike has fried some key component, or a key piece of hardware has failed.

Every computer component has a "mean-time-before-failure" rating. That means it will eventually fail, and the cheaper the computer the lower the rating. So, your first defense against this problem is not to get the cheapest computer you can find to run your business but to get the best you can afford.

So, something has gone wrong, and it's time to restore from a backup. Could you do it under the pressure of having to?

Most companies think they are backing up but don't find out until it's too late they are not. One rule of thumb is that if you cannot restore from a backup you do not have one.

We have seen more than one scenario where a company has tried to reconstruct its business from paper records after a failure because it did not have a recoverable current backup. And, there have been extreme cases where companies have failed because they did not know where to send their coaches or who owed them what.

Here are some simple rules to help you avoid these nightmares:

1. Make sure current spyware and virus protection is installed on your computers. Just because you got a free trial to Norton Anti-Virus when you purchased your system two years ago does not mean you are protected. The bad guys write new viruses all the time and you need to have a current subscription to get the current prescriptions. Check that your virus protection is up-to-date and working.

2. Back-up: Built into the RBS system is a utility from SYBASE (our database provider) that allows the open server copy of the database to be copied as a scheduled task to a backup folder that can then be copied to a tape or other back-up medium, using whatever back-up software you have. One common mistake people make is thinking that because they have some tape software backing up the entire server hard drive they are also getting a copy of their most current charter data. Open databases cannot be copied, just like open Word documents on a network cannot be copied or changed. The internal back-up is set up to work with any new installation by RBS technicians. But, a server upgrade, or change in administrator passwords can cause these Windows-scheduled tasks to be ignored. Anytime this type of change is made call us to make sure your internal back-up is still working.

3. Back-up often: Once you get over the hurdle of having the internal back-up working properly, you need a back-up strategy based on time. The next most common mistake is the back-up data file is copied to some external media, disk tape, memory key, but only yesterday's data is backed-up. This is fine if you discover the problem tomorrow. But, if you discover the problem two days later or if for some reason last night's back-up did not work, you will not be as current as you would like to be. A professional back-up strategy is to have a back-up or tape for each day of the week. And, have one for the end of the week and then one for the end of the month. Going backwards is sometimes a good thing for restoring back-ups.

4. Back-up right. One of the right things to do is to have a daily, weekly and monthly strategy as described above. We have customers that have licensed a single-user copy of the RBS system and in addition to their other back-up strategy have us set it up so they can back-up to a workstation system so they can be back up and running on the system while whatever hardware solutions to fix the problem are implemented. In more extreme situations, where a customer has a 24/7 operation where they need a fail-safe system, they have a standby server and an hourly clone of the data to this server. This is the setup we had with our contracts for the Olympics in Atlanta and Salt Lake City, and we have a similar arrangement with a number of our "regular" customers.

5. Disaster recovery drill. No matter what strategy you deploy, you should practice recovery to see if you can actually do it. And don't just do it on your own. Have your local technical adviser involved, or give us a call and we will help you, so you do not over-write new data with old. Whether this is a drill or a real recovery, do not panic. Think before you act. Get someone else involved. Get a second opinion. We have seen more than one case where the problem was made worse by jumping to quickly. We call it Do-It-Your-Self-Brain-Surgery.

When you choose a software vendor for your mission-critical applications you need to select one that is willing to provide the after-sales support to ensure your systems stay running and that even the smallest things can be the most important.

For information about RBS and its tour-and-charter management software visit www.rbs2000.com, or call (800) 448-7001.