- Automated server recovery eliminates downtime -

London, June 3, 2010 – StorageCraft UK (www.storagecraft.co.uk), the provider of disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops, today announces the launch of HeadStart Restore (HSR), which enables automatic server recovery in a matter of minutes rather than hours.

HeadStart Restore, a feature of the latest version of ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise, allows organisations to simultaneously restore server backup images whilst backing up the server, reducing recovery time and providing peace of mind to IT administrators. As Scott Barnes, chief technology officer at StorageCraft explains, “System restores often involve terabytes of data, which means a realistic recovery time objective (RTO) is several hours. However, with HeadStart Restore, we’ve drastically reduced the time it takes to recover your systems and data because most of the system and data recovery has taken place before a problem or disaster has even occurred.”

To initiate the process the IT administrator simply needs to create a scheduled system backup job using the ShadowProtect backup programme. As the server is being backed-up HeadStart Restore automatically begins the recovery process by simultaneously restoring all the data on the server to a virtual disk, including all incremental backup images taken throughout the day, with the additional safety of a flexible latency period.

Speaking about the flexibility of the offering Tammie Coles, European Business Development Director at StorageCraft says, “One of the key benefits of HSR is that the control of the backup and restore process remains fully with the customer and can be tailored to meet their specific IT requirements at any time. For example, the new Lag Time Apply feature in HSR allows administrators to delay the automatic recovery process by hours or days to avoid potential issues arising from malware or a virus, while still allowing them to make incremental back-ups every 15 minutes.”

In the event of a disaster the administrator only needs a few minutes to finalise the virtual disk and run the Hardware Independent Restore feature to get the server back up and running. The final incremental backups, which were created within the lag time, take only seconds to apply meaning that the total elapsed time between the disaster and the restore is a few minutes, not several days.

As Coles concludes, “Downtime is expensive and customers just cannot afford to wait the hours it takes for servers to be rebuilt to come back online. StorageCraft’s HeadStart Restore takes away this pain; our customers know that they can continue working within minutes and are not required to wait days or have to work over weekends for their servers to be rebuilt. This is invaluable to our customers and we look forward to keeping more companies in business 24/7.”