When Your Company Needs a Bare-Metal System Restore
One of the most overlooked and yet critically important aspects of doing business in today's marketplace is the need for reliable back up to ensure minimal downtime in the event of catastrophic system failure. Nearly every market segment relies heavily on technology for data flow and operations. Despite the terrible implications of loss in the event of total system failure, few companies have adequate protection in place to ensure recovery. While a number of products are available to ensure data recovery, companies must plan for the need to recover more than lost information. A bare-metal system restore accomplishes more than retrieval of lost data.
Consider this business nightmare: the CFO of a company has a quarterly report due for filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The report represents thousands of man-hours of expense from lawyers, accountants, and operations personnel. All of the data is consolidated in the CFO's desktop, and with a few hours of his time tomorrow morning, it will be ready for edgarization. That evening, the janitorial service accidentally knocks the CFO's computer from the desk, shattering the hard drive. It is an almost insurmountable crisis…unless a bare-metal system restore is available.
Local disk image restore is not quite the same as this process. In a local disk image utility, a copy of the disk image, and the restoration software are stored on the backed up computer. If the restoration software is compromised, the restoration will fail to produce results. The bare-metal system restore is also vastly more powerful than a simple data backup, which stores application documents and data but does not restore applications or software.
When an IT professional restores a system's data and software without any need for a present installed software or operating system, that is a bare-metal system restore. Essentially, this type of restore works on a computer that is simply "bare metal" with no software or operating system necessary. This kind of a back up includes an image of the operating system, applications and data so that the backed up system can be restored to an entirely independent piece of hardware. A catastrophic failure of hardware therefore no longer represents a catastrophic loss of the system.
The process works by storing copies as images of the entire contents of a disk to external storage such as a networked server or external media. This type of system restore writes those images to another physical disk without the need for the original software. The disk image can either be accessed via a server that stores all of the bootable information or via external media such as a peripheral steady-state drive or a CD. The restoration puts the backed up system on the new hardware as it was prior to the crash—a bare-metal system restore.
Consider this business nightmare: the CFO of a company has a quarterly report due for filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The report represents thousands of man-hours of expense from lawyers, accountants, and operations personnel. All of the data is consolidated in the CFO's desktop, and with a few hours of his time tomorrow morning, it will be ready for edgarization. That evening, the janitorial service accidentally knocks the CFO's computer from the desk, shattering the hard drive. It is an almost insurmountable crisis…unless a bare-metal system restore is available.
Local disk image restore is not quite the same as this process. In a local disk image utility, a copy of the disk image, and the restoration software are stored on the backed up computer. If the restoration software is compromised, the restoration will fail to produce results. The bare-metal system restore is also vastly more powerful than a simple data backup, which stores application documents and data but does not restore applications or software.
When an IT professional restores a system's data and software without any need for a present installed software or operating system, that is a bare-metal system restore. Essentially, this type of restore works on a computer that is simply "bare metal" with no software or operating system necessary. This kind of a back up includes an image of the operating system, applications and data so that the backed up system can be restored to an entirely independent piece of hardware. A catastrophic failure of hardware therefore no longer represents a catastrophic loss of the system.
The process works by storing copies as images of the entire contents of a disk to external storage such as a networked server or external media. This type of system restore writes those images to another physical disk without the need for the original software. The disk image can either be accessed via a server that stores all of the bootable information or via external media such as a peripheral steady-state drive or a CD. The restoration puts the backed up system on the new hardware as it was prior to the crash—a bare-metal system restore.
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