Server Disaster Recovery - How to Choose the Right Program

The truth is that all server disaster recovery programs are not alike, and by choosing one over the other, you might be making the difference between excelling in your business and going out of business.

What Features Should You Look For?

In some ways, selecting a server disaster recovery is like buying an insurance policy, but for your data. The first thing that you must realize is that you need to insure not only your basic data (your documents, images, movies, databases, etc.), but also your applications. A lot of programs only take care of the data and leave you to rebuild your own network.

However, if you are like most companies, your network was built over a long period of time and often by several different people, so reconstructing it exactly as it is would be impossible. Therefore, make sure that you choose a server disaster recovery program that will allow you to essentially rebuild your entire server onto a new box, which is known as “bare metal” recovery. This may be one of the most important features to look for.

What Other Features Are Available?

Don’t forget that if you store your backup in the same location as your primary server, then whatever happened to your primary server may also affect your backup. In other words, if a power surge wipes out the hard drive on your server, it may well destroy your backup. If the sprinklers go off in your building and flood everything, you will lose the backup and your original data.

So one feature that is essential is the ability to save your backup to another location, or “the cloud,” if possible. This is not expensive, and the cost of saving your data is actually included in some programs. If you have a server in another building or even in another city, you can simply use that as the backup, but usually it is a good idea if the backup is made out of the network entirely.

Can You Afford It?

A lot of people don’t bother with server disaster recovery plans because they don’t think that they can afford having the network down for long periods of time while a backup is made. The best programs will allow everyone to keep on computing while the backups are made, with no loss in functionality. You can make incremental backups or full backups, and once you have set the schedule to run, you never have to worry about it. If you don’t think that you can afford this type of program, think again, because the price of not having it is a lot more than you might know.