Unfortunately computer hardware does not last forever and people cannot prevent natural disasters like tornadoes, floods and hurricanes. Can anyone even be sure they are protected from electrical fires? The reality is computer hardware failures and disasters happen and the best thing a business can do is invest in a good reliable data backup and hope they never need it. It is as the saying goes, “It is better to be safe than sorry.”
Point-of-Rental Systems recommends a minimum of two backups. One should be an on-site full system backup and the other should be an off-site data backup. The off-site data backup will predominately be used in cases of a disaster, .i.e. flood or fire, destroying all computer and server hardware. MozyPro is a good off-site backup solution. You can go to www.porhelp.com and click the Mozy banner at the top to start an account. MozyPro backs up open files (ones being used) and transmits only the changed BITS or “In-File Delta Technology”. This means only the changed parts of a 1 gigabyte database file would be backed up on a given day. This keeps the amount of time to backup over the Internet at a minimum. An example of an on-site full system backup is utilizing Windows Server 2008 R2/2012 Standard’s built-in bare-metal backup called Windows Server Backup. It is included with the Windows operating system thus no additional cost except for an extra hard drive to schedule as the backup target.
The entire server recovery can take from a couple of hours to days depending on the severity of the hardware failure or disaster. The most important thing is having a good data backup ready to restore once you get the new replacement server hardware.