ProNet’s business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning
Businesses, like any human venture, are susceptible to disaster. Rises or drops in stock market prices can cause great financial loss, and so can a natural disaster such as a flood or a mudslide. Worst of all, with our modern dependence on computers for storing our data, a breakdown in a company’s computer system can cause large amounts of information to be lost. It can take days, even weeks, to recover all that information – if, hopefully, it can be recovered at all.
That is why we at ProNet Computers have made it our business to help people get back everything they have lost as a result of computer disasters. We employ two main methods of recovery, one being the bare metal restore methods and the other being the file replication method.
The Bare Metal Restore Method
This method is so named because there is no need to resort to any previously – installed operating system. The way it works is that the data is backed up in such a way that the system can be restored without that requirement. The server is completely backed up and within three hours, it can be restored to a spare one.
One of its disadvantages, however, is that even before large amounts of data are lost, considerable time and energy need to be expended. In addition, one may require a unique CD for the purpose, and possibly a new one each time the system is changed.
The File Replication Method
File restoration is much less costly than bare metal restoration. The data is replicated using an out-of-building server that goes into operation should the first server fail. This method is only cost effective if one server is being replicated; nor should it be used as a general means of data recovery.
There are some other recovery methods in existence. The local disk image restore method, for instance, resembles the bare metal restore method, except that restoration software is stored on a backed up computer. And there is the images and snapshot- based recovery method, but that is used mainly for short-term protection. Here at ProNet we do not believe either of those methods are as powerful as the two we use.
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