Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

There are times when simple backup just isn’t enough. Total system loss (fire, flood & theft spring to mind here) is a different issue entirely. Whilst it is possible to recover from conventional backups, it will mean days (or weeks) of downtime and the end result may be less than perfect.

‘Disaster recovery’, is the process of recovering your business systems from a major incident. This normally involves complete loss of all (or most) of your local infrastructure and, in extreme cases, loss of your premises as well.

All business should have a disaster recovery plan that has been validated and – if possible – tested. The plan will have to deal with a whole range of things, like premises, phones, post, employees and so on – we’re only qualified to help with the IT parts of this plan: but it has to integrate with the whole nonetheless, so we are available to be involved at any stage of your plan’s development…

Planning For Worst Case Scenarios…

As a responsible manager you have to plan for the worst: so just imagine arriving at your office one morning to find it flooded out. It’s unlikely – but far from impossible (Worcester has it’s fair share of flooding!).

It’s now your job to get your business back up and running with the minimum impact on your customers, your turnover and your cash-flow.

Assuming you have been diligent, you’ll have an off-site backup somewhere (probably an external hard drive that someone takes home every night). This is great as far as it goes. However, dealing with a total loss means there is a great deal of work to undertake before you get to the point of re-installing that data. In particular the hardware will have to be acquired, installed and configured before we get to that point. And this is not a trivial (or quick) task with servers. You’ll be looking at downtime measured in days, if not weeks.

IT Business Continuity for & Disastery Recovery Company Worcestershire

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Our Solutions…

  • An in-house device that handles ALL your backup requirements.
  • Fully automatic, and customisable – with command & control available in-house or via the Web portal.
  • Replication of your data to the cloud (for the ‘off-site’ component of your backup).
  • All UK-based for Data Protection compliance.
  • All PCs in the network completely backed-up.
  • The ability to run any/all your systems as ‘virtual PCs’ in The Cloud, from anywhere with an Internet connection. This include running your PC at an earlier state, and virtualising your whole network, including servers.
  • Recovery of a system image to existing hardware, or a hardware-agnostic recovery pack (for use on dissimilar hardware) or a VM image.
  • Ability to view/recover individual items from Exchange data stores.
  • Ability to view/recover individual files, and compare across different backups.
  • Courier-delivered replacement backup hardware. In the event of a major incident a replacement backup unit will be supplied, pre-loaded with your data. This will massively reduce the amount of Internet downloading required, and greatly speed up the recovery process.
  • Full control of the backup schedule to minimise impact on day-to-day performance.
  • Full reporting and alerting system.
  • Payment is either by Gb of data managed or by number of users / devices on the system, whichever is most cost effective. Thus clients with large numbers of devices, but modest data usage, are not unfairly penalised.
Disaster Recovery IT Company Worcester
How does this help me?

Now, in the case of our hypothetical fire, you can send your employees to any Internet connected location (including homes, cafes or rented office accommodation). Then, using any computer (e.g. personal laptops or devices purchased / hired / borrowed) they can connect to THEIR OWN PC in the cloud within minutes. Your team will remain productive while the work goes on behind the scenes to repair & commission your permanent facility.

Not only are your staff back and working within hours, the recovery process will be much faster as well. The ability to recover full images mean that the machines (including the servers) will be restored to their original state – even if the replacement hardware is not identical to the original. Typically the process will reduce from a couple of weeks to a couple of days – a major saving for your business.

For a comprehensive & cost-effective solution to your Disaster Recovery needs, contact us to arrange an appointment (with demo if required), so we can help you formulate your plan...