Automatically Manage Network Configuration Backups

Managing risk—it’s why companies hire your managed services firm.

They want you to manage the risk of network downtime. Because downtime means disruption to their business, which means loss of productivity and revenue.

Let’s face it—stuff happens (see Rule #4 of the Auvik Way) and not all of it can be predicted or avoided. Maybe a switch suddenly dies because of a component flaw. Maybe flooding takes out part of a client’s network.

No matter what causes the downtime, however, getting the client back up as quickly as possible is important. It’s important for saving that client from costly disruption, of course. But it’s also important for maintaining their trust and a positive working relationship.

For all these reasons, backing up your clients’ network devices is crucial—just as crucial as a backup and disaster recovery (BDR) strategy for endpoints and data.

Not many of your clients, if any, will operate without a BDR strategy for endpoints and data. And they’re expecting you to have them similarly covered on network devices.

But do you?

Manual backups don’t work

Since manual configuration backups for network devices are extremely time-consuming, you might do them just monthly or even quarterly. Most often, though, what we see is MSPs simply aren’t doing config backups at all.

That leaves a big hole in the service you’re offering clients.

Imagine there was a storm. Lightning hits the transformer beside your biggest client, and the surge knocks out their main firewall and who knows what else. The firewall is bricked. You likely have some spare hardware in your office you can grab and run over to the client site.

But then what? Do you remember how you or your team had set up that firewall? Grab a case of Red Bull on the way because without that backup, it’s going to be an all-nighter.

You’ll be stuck trying to recreate the config from scratch. And with every hour that goes by, your client is getting more and more frustrated.

Leave the config backups to Auvik

With Auvik, configuration backups are automated. We continually poll every network device for configuration changes. When we detect a change, we make a backup.

Every config version is stored in archive. When a firewall bricks, you’ve still got the most recent config at your fingertips. Once the new hardware is in place, restoring service can take as little as just a few minutes.

That’s exactly how it worked for this Auvik partner:

“Auvik actually saved our bacon a couple times where we had a switch go belly up. Because we had the config in Auvik and it was up to date, the client was back up in a matter of minutes versus hours.”

With Auvik, your techs don’t have to remember to do config backups. Your backups take no technician time. And in the event of device failure or disaster, you’ve got the client covered.

Smart … safe … phew.

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