Real-time data recovery is one thing if you work for someone like the Megabucks Corporation. You can just picture it: a call comes into the Megabucks help desk with a cry for help over a lost file. The help desk person, adorned with one of those Mission Impossible-type headsets, calmly turns to his or her 56-inch high-resolution flat-screen monitor and, with a couple mouse clicks, has restored the data. Of course, Megabucks, with their million-dollar IT budget, has implemented a complex and highly expensive solution such as real-time disk mirroring or real-time image backup to make all this possible.
Meanwhile back at the company you or I work for, it usually goes like this: a cry for help comes into the help desk over a lost file. The IT person currently on help desk duty comes running from across the room where she was doing something else, because the company can’t afford a full-time dedicated help desk attendee. After listening to the complaint, our help desk person asks hopefully if the user has checked the Windows Recycle Bin. Yes, the user replies, but no luck–the data was saved across the network to a server and can’t be retrieved through the Recycle Bin. Sighing with exasperation, the IT person then initiates a search through backup. If that file existed when the last backup was performed, then several hours later the user will receive an older version of the file which he or she will then have to spend some time to bring back to its current state. But if that file has been created since the last backup, the user will have to start from scratch. This could mean hours, days or weeks of lost time, as well as lost income, for the company.
There is, of course, a third alternative. That same frantic help desk call comes in, our intrepid help desk attendee once again comes flying across the room, and casually tells the user to check a different “bin”–one that has replaced the Windows Recycle Bin. With an instant click, the user has retrieved the lost file. Yes, the file was saved on a remote server, but it doesn’t matter–this particular solution allows for real time data protection and real time recovery no matter if it was saved on the local drive or a server drive across a network. In under a minute the problem is solved and everybody goes back to work.
Such a solution comes at a tiny fraction of the cost of a solution such as that Megabucks has implemented, and is available to companies everywhere. Real time data protection and recovery means that the company you or I work for might save enough in lost time and money to one day become the Megabucks Corporation.
