Backup problems continue to plague businesses. One of the biggest problems happens when you attempt to restore and find out your backup is no good. For the past few years, business continuity devices have emerged to ease the pain of backups.

Business continuity devices reside in your data center with your other servers. Their features usually include:

• A snapshot image of your servers every 15 minutes so, if a server crashes, you are able to quickly restore to 15 minutes before.
• The ability to, during the night, use available bandwidth to copy your data offsite to a secure data center in case something devastating happens at your site.
• In some cases, the capability to actually perform as a “crashed server” so your users can keep working even if a server crashes.

Generally, the business continuity appliances are sold and maintained by IT consultant firms in your area. The Barracuda is an example of an appliance you can get directly. Some examples of devices can be found at www.connectwise.net and www.barracudanetworks.com.

I encourage you to contact your local IT consultants to see what business continuity appliances they offer. Please post your comments on this blog.