Posted by Laura Shafer on Tue, Aug 17, 2010 @ 03:49 PM
We get a lot of requests for best practices and recommendations for ways to set up your server environment. ShadowProtect makes it pretty easy to backup everything on your Windows servers, but there are ways to set things up so that you're maximizing your resources and your business continuity.
So one of our technical engineers has put together a great guide that outlines some ways to configure your servers and keep them up and running. It involves backing up each Windows server with ShadowProtect Server (or ShadowProtect Small Business Server) and running ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise on your critical servers so they're backed up onsite and offsite. This way, when there's a business disruption -- from a server crash to a category 5 hurricane -- you can restore your servers, recover your data, and get your business running again. 
These scenarios involve our new VirtualBoot technology, that allows you to boot a ShadowProtect backup image file into a virtual machine in a matter of a few short minutes, as well as HeadStart Restore, which allows you to restore your backups before they're needed. You can find out more about ShadowProtect by visiting the product pages, or you're always welcome to contact us with your questions.
Posted by Laura Shafer on Fri, May 28, 2010 @ 04:48 PM
Data storage is growing larger all the time. EMC just came out with a report predicting massive increases in the amount of data we’ll be storing in the next 10 years. Forget terabytes and petabytes — even exabytes; think zettabytes. How much is a zettabyte? It’s a trillion gigabytes. It’s enough to make your head ache. Even amid the recession, data growth increased phenomenally. That doesn’t mean we’ll see petabyte hard drives this year, but all this data means that it will happen eventually, and probably sooner rather than later.
So what’s an IT admin to do to manage all of that growth? How can you wrap your brain around that much information, let alone protect all of that data? EMC says that we’ll have 44 times the amount of data we have now in 2020, so ignoring the problem won’t make it disappear.
The best thing you can do is find the most elegant solution possible and enjoy the ride. Now is the time to plan for data explosion and figure out how you’re going to protect all of that information. Not just the information you’re using right now, but the information you’ll be using in five years. Plus, there will come a time a few years down the road when you’ll have to have access again to all your current information. Can you trust that your tape archive will cut it?
ShadowProtect Server 4.0 has a pretty cool feature in it called VirtualBoot™. One of the great uses for VirtualBoot is giving you access to legacy systems and data. Think you don’t have to worry about that? In six years, what operating system will you be using? Will all of the applications you’re currently running run on that system? VirtualBoot will allow you open your ShadowProtect backup image files and boot them into a virtual environment, for quick and easy access to all that data. Plus, it only takes one or two minutes to boot a large server volume, even one that’s a couple of terabytes in size. (Yes, that’s one or two minutes. It isn’t a typo.)
With ShadowProtect backups protecting your data, you won’t have to worry about your data getting out of hand. If you haven’t checked out features like VirtualBoot that are in ShadowProtect 4.0, we have all kinds of product information on the ShadowProtect Server page.