OnIT
Professional, reliable IT support.
Sign Up
Receive our FREE monthly newsletter full of tips and advise - Make It Work
OnIT Downloads
Server Rescue - Case Study
Peter Craghill - Chief Technical Officer for Thomson Online Benefits a software benefits administration and benefits consultancy company based in Victoria, London.
“We bought in Server Rescue in the summer of 2007. Like most businesses we have valuable information which we need to have the ability to get back up and running in a short space of time in a disaster recovery situation.
“We signed up for Server Rescue because it's a ready-made solution – there are other ways of dealing with a disaster recovery situation, but there is nothing available which is as advanced as Server Rescue as a package.
“We had a disaster recovery policy in place before we had Server Rescue, which had various backup tapes running and things like that in place, but now we don't need any of that any more.
“You can look into having spares on site, but at the end of the day that will cost you a lot of money and when you're trying to configure and install a server in disaster recovery situation it's a time-consuming process. Plus you won't know it's not working until it's too late, which can waste even more time.
Disaster recovery
“So you could go to all the trouble and expense of having spare servers in place, but the reality of disaster recovery is that you won't probably ever need to use it so you don't want to spend lots of money on it. However, at the same time you don't want to ignore it.
“There's been a lot of research carried out into disaster recovery and 80% of companies don't have a policy or strategy in place to deal with it and the research suggests that the majority of them will fail as businesses if they end up having a major data loss.
“The reality of the situation is that if you do put your own disaster recovery strategy in place, it will cost you thousands and if you don't it will initially cost you less, but you won't be able to cope if disaster does strike and it'll end up costing you more or you stand a chance of going out of business.
“Disaster recovery is one of those things that you hope that will never happen as it's the worst-case scenario for someone in my position, but if you haven't prepared for it and one does occur then you won't be in a job a week after it's happened.
Straightforward solution
“You don't have that problem with Server Rescue because everything is already done for you and you know it's going to work. It gives you that peace of mind that you have got the situation covered and you don't have to spend any time doing anything about it - it's all done for you.
“It was all very straightforward – OnIT came in, did what they needed to do and we had Server Rescue up and running and our disaster recovery solution in place. It was as simple as that.
“One of the best things about the whole Server Rescue package is that it's more of a financial commitment rather than a work commitment and doesn't take up any of your time or cause you any hassle. You just pay each month and you know everything is sorted out.
“What Server Rescue provides you with is a cost-effective solution to disaster recovery with the assurance that it will work if a disaster ever does strike your business.”
For full details about how Server Rescue works please download our Server Rescue Handbook or visit our Server Rescue Backup and Server Rescue Disaster Recovery pages.
If you are interested in signing up for Server Rescue please contact us on 0845 226 7734 or at makeitwork@onit.co.uk.