DR Options Abound

Today, software vendor XOsoft and service provider AmeriVault forged a partnership for online backup and disaster recovery aimed at companies in hurricane regions. (See XOsoft, AmeriVault Team.) Dubbed Fast Track, the services combine AmeriVault's physical sites with XOsoft's high availability and continuous data protection (CDP) software into three packages.

The most extensive plan offers CDP, failover to replica servers, reverse replication to restore data, a data center with redundant power, rack space for servers, and professional services. The mid-tier plan does not include the failover and rack space, and the third package handles offsite backup and replication and online data restoration.

Earlier this month AmeriVault launched a rack-space subscription service that lets organizations bring or ship servers to AmeriVault sites to restore lost data if they lose their main site. (See AmeriVault Adds Recovery.)

In another recent partnership, SunGard Availability Services and Recall Corp. teamed up to provide offsite protection to SMBs. (See SunGard, Recall Team Up.)

Eze Castle Integration, an IT outsourcer for financial services, expanded its portfolio of disaster recovery services for hedge fund and investment firms last week. (See Eze Castle Offers DR.) Eze Castle previously offered DR services that included offsite replication for Exchange, SQL Server, and other critical applications, and quarterly testing. Now it offers a higher-end package that includes failover, multiple co-locations, and promises no downtime in recovery applications. It also added a basic service for file and email availability.

Fear of natural disasters isn't the only reason companies are turning to DR services.

New York-based Blue Mountain Capital Group used Eze Castle's IT services to launch its hedge fund in 2003, then signed on for its DR plan last year. Blue Mountain, which has $3 billion under management, has 60 people in its New York office and 11 in London. President Stephen Siderow says he considered setting up data centers in those offices or a hot site before signing on with Eze Castle for DR."We considered doing it in one of our locations, but it seemed to us that we couldn't ourselves do something as robust as Eze Castle offered," he says. "The logic of outsourcing seems to be compelling -- you're pooling your resources with others investing in the same solution."

Siderow says Eze Castle lets him replicate data between New York, London, and Eze Castle's Boston hot site, while Blue Mountain can run its business from either of its offices.

When asked how much down time would cost, Siderow says, "I don't want to know. We've taken lots of steps to make sure that doesn't happen.

"We're an asset manager and hedge fund, our data is our business. Obviously if we're unable to access data, we can't trade our book. Most of the time it helps you sleep at night that you know everything's backed up in secured servers and have redundancy."

Next PageLike Blue Mountain, many companies stand to lose big if their servers crash for an hour or so. Not every company is using full DR services, though. Some just want help getting started.

Josh Moore, IS director of operations for Batteries Plus, turned to CDW to add a DR site when his company began selling products over its Website in May. Moore says downtime would cost Batteries Plus $26,000 in lost online sales per hour, so he went to CDW to set up the company's first SAN.

Batteries Plus installed an IBM DS4300 at headquarters, plus 15 BladeCenter servers onsite and another 35 at an offsite location.

"We had attached storage -- it was our first foray into networked storage," Moore says of going to a consultant approach. "We were a little bit nervous and wanted to make sure we had bases covered. We wanted to make sure our e-commerce platform was going to be around 24 by seven by 365."

Others find they dont need any services for disaster recovery.Vintage Filings LLC, which helps companies file print and electronic SEC documents, recently picked XOsoft's WANSyncHA for disaster recovery, but IT VP Shawn Aruch says a service would not be cost effective. Aruch's firm had all the gear it needed and was only interested in a software package to failover Exchange and SQL Server.

"We looked at three scenarios," he says. "We could outsource the whole thing where we let them run everything; we could have a managed service where we have the equipment and they monitor it; or do it completely in house."

He decided to go in house. "We looked at using a service, but the pricing wasn't in our budget," Aruch explains. "Other providers would have given us software and services, but we'd be paying $10,000 to $20,000 a year for something we wouldn't use."

According to Aruch, one managed service would have cost him three times a year what he pays XOsoft in licenses.

— Dave Raffo, News Editor, Byte and SwitchOrganizations mentioned in this article:

AmeriVault Corp.

CDW Corp.

Eze Castle Integration

SunGard (NYSE: SDS)

CA XOsoft