Computerworld - Axcient Inc. today announced it is offering a new service that allows automated backup onsite, as well as business continuity or disaster recovery schemes to be set up for managed service providers and IT administrators.
Axcient's ServerAlive claims that an administrator can restore a failed server, including the operating system and all applications, in about 15 minutes by launching a virtual instance of the failed server through a Web browser. The server image then runs on the appliance until an administrator can repair the server or install a new one, at which time the server image can be migrated from the appliance.
The ServerAlive service can be coupled with Axcient's RapidRestore software for e-mail, which is a local agent-less backup service for Exchange environments, and with its SmartCloudDR service, which replicates the full server image offsite to one of Axcient's data centers. From there, data can be restored in case of a disaster.
"Businesses will often use four or more vendors to cobble together a data protection scheme. That represents huge complexity in terms of cost, per licensing charges, and software and hardware management," said Axcient CEO Justin Moore. "What we've done is boiled it down to one solution."
Moore said his company's offering is better than other cloud-storage services because it requires no local installation of software or agents. The service starts at about $150 per month for backups and a 250GB appliance. The ServerAlive appliances come in various capacities, from 250GB to more than 4TB. Those capacities are then mirrored in the Axcient's offsite cloud.
Moore said the ServerAlive appliances are "enterprise-class" servers configured with serial ATA drives. The ServerAlive business continuity platform takes complete disk images of Windows 2003 and 2008 servers for restoration to disparate hardware. The service can then provide data restoration down to an end-user's single e-mails, calendars or contacts.
Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at 
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