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By Jason Soifer The Daily Courier

Virgil Aurand is principal consultant at Sun Mountain Information Technology in Prescott, which helps businesses with their technological needs.

Jason Soifer/The Daily Courier Virgil Aurand is principal consultant at Sun Mountain Information Technology in Prescott, which helps businesses with their technological needs.

Virgil Aurand left a dead-end job with a freight company for a career with a connection to the information superhighway.

Aurand is principal consultant at Sun Mountain Information Technology at 117 E. Gurley St., Suite 111. Aurand and his nine staff members work with businesses in order to get the computer assistance they need.

Sun Mountain helps business owners with consulting and support for computer systems, networks, security and Web development.

“(It’s those) things that actually improve the bottom line for businesses,” he said. “Everything is related to how people interact with their system.”

Aurand’s team includes a couple of senior system engineers and three Web developers who help business owners select and maintain computer systems and find and solve issues, while communicating in ways their clients understand.

“I like to say we speak geek and English so we can bridge that gap,” he said. “We’re in it for the long-term relationship and making our clients as profitable as possible.”

Aurand said his career path changed in the 1990s to computers after reaching out to a friend of a friend who had a lot of knowledge.

“I was inspired by the potential to really have a successful technology career,” he said.

After connecting with the friend and figuring out his career “recipe,” Aurand hit the books amd began pursuing computer certifications, and his career took off.

Born and raised in Chicago, Aurand said he worked as a computer consultant for more than 15 years before coming to Prescott.

“From there my direction was clear,” he said.

Aurand said different packages are available for monthly service, and he also offers 24-hour assistance.

“The thing I love about my job is I learn something new from my clients every day,” he said. “We really can provide total care.”

The office is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. For information, call 899-3532 or visit www.sunmountainit.com.

Project: Implement new Router, Firewall & Secure Wifi Network

Role: Technical Implementation and Consultation

Key Skills: Network Infrastructure & Security

Project Details: Implement new router, firewall & Secure Wifi (wireless) Network.  Migrate all office workstations to utilize the new Infrastructure.

“We hired Virgil’s firm to help us improve and secure our dedicated Internet connectivity, and to develop VPN capability. As a mid-sized manufacturing company, we didn’t have all of the internal resources we needed to make sure we designed things right. At the same time, I was leery of bringing in consulting resources, because of previous experiences where lots of paper got generated, but not much else. Virgil did an extraordinary job for us. He listened carefully to determine our needs, thoughtfully developed a reasonable and creative list of alternatives, helped us understand the pros, cons, and costs, then did a masterful job of implementation. We got a full seven year lifecycle out of his solution – and it was only replaced due to outside forces. It proved to be a great value. If I needed help with any kind of server or networking project, I’d hire him again in an instant.”

Bob B -IT Director, Packaging Company

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“We just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU! for all the effort you have put forth into making our website look so great. Your work is GREATLY appreciated!!!”

Denis & Jessica -Owners, Professional Detailing Company

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“I just wanted to tell you that I LOVE the scanner on the copier. It is so easy to use and such a time saver – I don’t know how I ever lived/worked without it before. Thanks for setting that up for us! ”

Jill N. -Administrator, Law Firm

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Dear Virgil,

“Working with you on our website this last year has been a real treat. …Best wishes to you in 2009 –We look forward to continuing the development of our website.

Yours truly,

C.T. – Owner, Financial Services Firm

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“Virgil is thoughtful, careful, and very aware of the environment that he enters. He is able to adapt to any situation that he is called upon to face, even if it is a hostile one. He inspires confidence in those he works with. And when it comes to making changes to technical systems, he has always made well-reasoned recommendations that are cost-effective solutions. From an accountant’s point of view, Virgil is a good return on your investment.”

Diane R. – Sr. Vice President and CFO, National Life Insurance Company

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“Although I have worked with Virgil only a relatively short period of time, I have gained a great appreciation for his knowledge, experience and professionalism…I have also learned to appreciate Virgil’s honesty and work ethic. He makes sure he understands what you want him to do and then checks with you if he sees a need to move outside the limits of the initial work order…In short, I highly recommend him for technical support. You will have a hard time finding anyone more competent or professional.”

Frank W. A., Ph. D. – Director of Distributed Learning, Judson University

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“Thank you so much for recovering all that information!! You’re a life-saver!”

Jennifer – Real Estate Agent

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“It has been my pleasure to work with Virgil for the past few months. The environment that he came into was created by someone who meant well, but just didn’t have the technical background necessary to accomplish the tasks at hand. Virgil was able to work with the previous tech in a manner that enabled him understand the intent and goals that were trying to be accomplished and then he was able to pick up the ball and proceed.”

“Virgil is very pro-active and diligent in educating our staff to understand how we can trouble shoot the simple things making us less dependent upon him. This is something that I greatly appreciate. He always responds immediately to any of our requests, large or small, and does so in a professional, pleasant manner.”

“Our entire team enjoys working with Virgil and he is very thorough and patient even with those who are not very computer literate. He is a very trustworthy person and has a very high work ethic. I highly recommend Virgil for any technical needs that your company might have. He is by far one of the best in his field that I have had the opportunity to work with.”

Sincerely,

Korina P, – HR Manager, Construction Company

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“Capable, competent, knowledgeable. Time well spent.”

Ann S. – Business Owner/Fan of Remote Support

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“Virgil is very accessible and promt to returning phone calls. He’s efficient at problem solving and explaining in easy terms why i’m experiencing such problems. He’s excellent to work with!!”

Myra – Administrator, Mortgage Company

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Project: Windows 2008 Server, Microsoft Exchange & Windows 7 Professional Implementation

Role: Technical Implementation and Consultation

Key Skills:  Windows 2008 Server | Active Directory | Database Migration | Windows 7 Professional | Microsoft Office 2010 | Microsoft Exchange | Network Infrastructure & Security

Project Details: Implement Windows 2008 Server, configure Microsoft Exchange, Migrate databases & applications, and Migrate to new Workstations with Windows 7

Introduction

Computers are the default storage medium for most businesses and virtually all home users. Because portable media is quickly becoming an outdated and expensive method for safeguarding important data it is essential to secure critical business assets and personal information with an easy-to-use, automated, online backup service. The backup, archiving and recovery service of Sun Mountain Backup is a powerful, yet simple to use solution. Sun Mountain Backup comes equipped with encryption backup tools previously available only to Fortune 500 companies, but with an interface designed to be use by anyone in any size organization. This proven technology is user-friendly, reliable, secure and cost-effective. In this white paper you will learn about product features and how the solution can help protect your important data. Ease-of-Use You already know how crucial it is to back up your data, but did you know that online backup is also effortless? Our technology aims to make your life easier by providing several user-friendly features including simple installation, automatic backup, off-site storage, scalability and 24/7 file restoration.

Simple Installation

Forget installing drives and changing tapes! Those methods are labor-intensive and can take hours or even days to complete, depending upon the size of the business. Setting up our solution is an easy, one-time event. Within minutes, you are backing up files automatically on a schedule of your choice. After the initial backup, subsequent backups take mere minutes to complete because only new or modified files are uploaded. Automatic Backup
With Sun Mountain Backup, data backups are completely automatic and you can also manually initiate a backup at any time. Once the software is installed, you will create a backup set. The backup set is the list of files that you want to backup along with the schedule of when you want the backups to occur. You do not have to select each and every file that you wish to backup because the software includes wizards that make it effortless to choose the files for your backup set. You have two options for selecting files. You can choose files according to the folders that they reside in or by their file types. You would choose to select files by folder if, for example, you wanted to backup every file in My Documents. You would simply select the My Documents folder from a Windows Explorer-like view of your hard drive. The software allows you to select multiple folders, to exclude certain folders and to choose individual files to backup. When selecting files by type, Sun Mountain Backup provides a list of commonly used application programs to choose from. For example, you could create a backup set that backed up all of the Microsoft Word and Excel data files on your hard drive, by simply clicking on two boxes (Word and Excel). Every time a backup occurs, the online backup software will automatically find all of your Word and Excel documents. To offer you even more power for managing your data backup sets, you have the option of including or excluding specific folders or even excluding specific types of files. Once you finish selecting what to backup, the online backup software can calculate how much data you have chosen. Setting up your secure online data backup service schedule is also very easy. The online backup software gives you the option of setting a different start time for each day of the week. You also can choose not to run backups on certain days. Or, you may want to keep the default schedule, which is to backup each night Monday through Friday. In addition to being able to edit or change a data backup set, the software also allows you to set up multiple backup sets. Multiple backup sets are useful, for example, if you want to backup the same files more than once a day or backup certain files daily and other files weekly.

Off-site Storage

With Sun Mountain Backup, all backed up data is automatically transmitted to two off-site, geographically dispersed, data centers via a secure Internet channel. If you are currently storing backups on portable media, such as tapes or disks, at your home or business, this online method would prevent the loss of data in the event of a natural or man-made disaster such as fire or theft. If you do bring portable media backups off-site, our solution eliminates the hassle of having to physically transport backup media to a facility.

Scalability

Have you had to catalog endless CD’s or change tapes in the middle of a backup when space runs out? Now you will never need to worry about purchasing more hardware to support your personal or business data growth. With this solution, you can never run out of storage space. We make it possible for your online storage account to grow with your needs.

File Restoration 24/7

Let’s face it – you could have the most powerful and most secure backup method around, but it is useless if you can’t easily recover your files when you need them. That is why we have made restoring files with the Sun Mountain Backup online backup service simple and reliable. In fact, you can start restoring your files in seconds with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Security

Our solution offers several features that provide maximum security when backing up and archiving data. Files are first compressed so that the data will take up less storage space and less bandwidth for transmission. The data is then encrypted using a unique 256 bit encryption key, that you choose, to ensure that files cannot be accessed by others. For added security, each encrypted file is sent over the Internet via a secure channel, and then stored in two redundant Level 4 secure data centers, located hundreds of miles apart from each other.

File Compression

Before your files are encrypted, they are compressed using state-of-the-art compression technology. This compression ensures that it will take less time to perform your backup. And because each file is significantly smaller, you use less storage space on our servers. Different file types tend to compress to different levels. Some files, such as multimedia files like MP3s and pictures are already compressed, so you will see little additional compression. Other files such as Microsoft Word documents and databases can compress more than 80%. For many files, compression rates depend a great deal on the ratio of text to binary information. For example, you will notice a much better compression for Microsoft Outlook .pst files and Microsoft Exchange databases if most emails contain only text rather than binary attachments.

Encryption

Sun Mountain Backup is a secure online data backup which encrypts each file using 256 bit AES encryption technology. When you first install and configure the online backup service software, you will choose a 48 character string that will then be converted into a 256 bit encryption key. Only you will have access to this encryption key. It will never be transmitted over the Internet and it is never stored on our servers. This means that only you can access your online backup files. Each file that you backup is encrypted using this key and remains encrypted until you restore it and it returns to your computer. How strong is 256 bit AES encryption? Well, let’s put it this way. In June 2003, 256-AES was approved by the United State’s National Security Agency (NSA) for use encrypting the U.S. government’s documents classified ‘TOP SECRET.’

Transmission

In addition, the software communicates with the backup servers using SSL (Secure Socket Layers) technology. This is the same encryption technology used by Internet browsers when a user enters a secured site such as an online bank. As a result, the online backup of data is encrypted twice. It is encrypted at all times using the 256 bit AES encryption, and it is encrypted again while it’s being sent over the Internet.

Storage

Your data is stored (in encrypted form) in two secure online data backup centers, located hundreds of miles apart from each other. Each data center has 24/7 monitoring and advanced security measures such as biometric controlled access as well as backup generators and redundant connections to the Internet.

Advanced Technical Features

We have spent a great deal of time and research to bring our customers advanced features that provide optimum functionality for backing up and restoring data. These features include Exchange and SQL plugins, multiple file revisions, logs and reports, and multiple computer support.

Exchange and SQL Plugins

Sun Mountain Backup gives you the power to backup your Microsoft Exchange Exchange 2000, Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 databases as well as Microsoft SQL Server databases. With Exchange, you can perform both full and incremental backups and with SQL, you can run full and differential backups. Plus, you can customize your backup schedule.

Microsoft Exchange Plugin

The Sun Mountain Backup Microsoft Exchange plugin is the perfect tool for performing live, secure Exchange backups. It takes minutes to install and configure the Exchange plugin, and once configured, backups will run automatically. You have the power to schedule full and incremental backups throughout any interval of the day, week, or month. The Exchange plugin runs seamlessly in the background as a service, never interrupting email flow. Moreover, the Exchange plugin provides the flexibility to perform individual mailbox and even message-level backups. With this new backup method, retrieving one lost or deleted email is no longer a hassle. The restore process could not be simpler: select the item you wish to retrieve and start the restore.

Microsolft SQL Server Plugin

With the Sun Mountain Backup SQL Server Plugin, your server will never experience any downtime during a backup. The plugin runs seamlessly in the background as a service, never interrupting or shutting down the SQL databases. It takes minutes to configure the SQL plugin and once completed, backups will run automatically. Setting up the plugin is effortless: simply download, select the databases you wish to backup, schedule times to run your full and differential backups, and then set the retention level. You can have a backup running in just moments. Restoring SQL data is just as easy as setting up the backup – select the item you wish to retrieve and start the restore.

Multiple Revisions

With our online backup service, you can store an unlimited number of versions of the same file (by default, the software stores the last 10 versions of each file). So, if you have certain files or databases that you update everyday or every week, you can always go back to a previous version if you need to. Go back to yesterday. Go back to last year. Plus, you never again have to worry about accidentally deleting the information in a file or overwriting a file by mistake. Of course, you probably won’t want to keep unlimited versions of all of your files because this would use up a lot of storage space. That is why Sun Mountain Backup offers a powerful revision rule wizard that lets you manage how old versions of files are stored. You can set the number of revisions for each file, folder, program or wildcard. So now you can keep an unlimited number of copies of your contact database, while only keeping a
few copies of your Outlook .pst file.

Logs and Reports

How do you know your backups actually worked? Sun Mountain Backup’s logs and reports show you what was backed up and when. With detailed statistics and information about each file that is backed up or restored, you never have to wonder if your backups really worked. Did a specific file get backed up? Just check the log.

Receive email notifications

If you want even more assurance that your backups are functioning, you have the option of receiving automatic email notifications following every successful backup. You can turn this option on and off whenever you want from the software.

Multiple Computer Support

With our online backup service, you can backup a single computer or server, multiple computers, mobile users or even multiple offices, all under one main Account. Sun Mountain Backup also lets you back up files from mapped
drives. So, if you have multiple servers that are mapped onto one server, you can backup data from these additional servers without having to add additional accounts. This also means you can backup files from computers running Linux or Mac by mapping their drives onto the PC that is running Sun Mountain Backup.

Why Sun Mountain Backup

With a plethora of different backup options available today, it can be difficult to decipher which one will work best for your home or business. Portable media backup has become too expensive, labor-intensive and overall, outdated. It is no wonder why online backup has become the most sought after form of protecting data. Sun Mountain Backup uses proven technology that has gained major recognition for its security, reliability, and usability. The features detailed in this white paper are just some of the reasons Sun Mountain Backup can benefit you and your important data. Our online backup solution is affordable and a practical solution for any user. Additionally, we provide world-class customer support.