But ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise also includes two additional features that make it much easier to improve business continuity and lower your recovery time objective (RTO), the maximum amount of time your server systems can be out of commission. These features are HeadStart Restore™ and replication.

HeadStart Restore – or HSR – allows you to begin the server recovery process right away, before a disaster. Whether it’s a natural disaster that took you out or a RAID router meltdown, it doesn’t really matter. You have to get access to your data as quickly as possible and you have to get your business running again.

First, you need to set up ShadowProtect Server (or ShadowProtect Small Business Server) to take regular backups of your data, then ShadowProtect will take snapshots of a point in time on your server. You can even set the scheduler in ShadowProtect to take incremental backups – just the deltas or small changes to your server – throughout the day.

The next thing you do is set ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise to create a restore job for a specific server. Once you’ve set up that job, ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise updates that restore job with the incremental changes that are made, so your restore job has all of the data updates that were made throughout the day. Here’s the really cool part: when a catastrophe strikes, you won’t have to wait hours and hours (or days and days) to get that server online again, because HSR has already been restoring the server. Recovery starts and is ongoing as your backups continue.

To get the server online, it will take just a few more steps. First, you finalize your restore job, which takes just a few seconds. Now you need to get it ready to restore into a virtual machine so you run ShadowProtect’s Hardware Independent Restore™ technology. Now you just reboot your server, and you’re up and running again. This process takes 15-20 minutes, even if you have a multi-TB volume of data.

The other key feature in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise is replication. Now you can send your backup images to an off-site location so that your backups are secure in case your primary location is wiped out by flood, fire or another sort of catastrophe.

You’ll want to note that  ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise is licensed per server. So one license allows you to perform one HeadStart Restore job, one on-site replication and one off-site replication.

You can find out more by visiting the ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise product page. Included there is a product overview which explains just what it is and how it works.

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DRAPER, Utah, U.S.A. – April 21, 2010 – StorageCraft Technology Corporation, a provider of innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops, today announced the release of StorageCraft ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise™ 4.0. The newest version in the ShadowProtect™ line of award-winning backup, disaster recovery and system migration technology dramatically decreases the amount of time required to restore Windows systems and improves central management of ShadowProtect backups.

ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise includes a new feature called HeadStart Restore™ (HSR), which allows IT managers to automate recovery – getting servers back up and running in a matter of mere minutes, rather than hours. IT managers create a system restore job from their ShadowProtect Server™ or ShadowProtect Small Business Server™ scheduled backups. The HSR job begins the recovery process immediately – and the restore job is updated with incremental changes throughout the day. Following a disaster, the administrator is able to finalize the restore and get the server online again very quickly.

“System restores often involve terabytes of data, which means a realistic RTO is hours,” said Scott Barnes, chief technology officer at StorageCraft. “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 occurred before there was even a failure.”

How HSR Works
To prepare a server for HSR, the IT administrator sets up a system restore job in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise, which begins recovery right away.
HeadStart Restore

Any incremental changes to the backup are also sent to the system restore job and applied. The Lag Time Apply feature in HSR also allows administrators to delay incremental changes – to account for corruption from malware or a virus. By default, this is set to three days, but this can be changed to suit IT requirements.

In the event of a disaster, the administrator finalizes the restore – which usually takes seconds to apply the incremental updates – then prepares the virtual environment, runs ShadowProtect’s Hardware Independent Restore™ technology, reboots the server, and is back up and running. The elapsed time is several minutes, not several hours.

“Being able to get a jump on the restore process with HeadStart Restore is a tremendous asset for our business and for our customers,” said Shawn Massey, director of NetAssist at Camera Corner/Connecting Point Computer Center. “We’re able to get servers up and running in a fraction of the time it used to take. Downtime is expensive, and knowing that it won’t take all day or all weekend to rebuild a server is invaluable.”

Additional Features
ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise also includes replication technology, to allow you to send your backup images to a separate location, on-site or off-site. Once you’ve configured replication, you can send backup images to one or multiple locations. This feature also lets you save backups to an off-site location to meet compliancy and archival requirements.

In addition, ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise allows administrators to verify and re-verify ShadowProtect backup image files, consolidate backup image files to minimize storage usage and streamline management and set up e-mail notification to track the status of backup jobs.

ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise has the following features:

·         HeadStart Restore
·         Lag Time Apply
·         Image replication
·         Image verification and re-verification
·         Image consolidation
·         E-mail notification

Pricing and Availability
ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise is available from authorized StorageCraft distributors and value-added resellers (VARs). Volume discounts are available.

For additional information about StorageCraft ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise 4.0, or to learn more about volume licensing, please e-mail sales@storagecraft.com, call +1 801 545-4700 or visit: www.StorageCraft.com/ShadowProtectIME.

About StorageCraft Technology Corporation
StorageCraft Technology Corporation provides innovative disk-based backup, disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops. StorageCraft delivers software products that reduce downtime, improve security and stability for systems and data and lower the total cost of ownership for servers, desktops and laptops.
www.storagecraft.com

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The revolutionary feature in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise is HeadStart Restore™, which allows you to simultaneously restore your server backup images, while you’re still backing up your server.

“System restores often involve terabytes of data, which means a realistic RTO is hours,” said Scott Barnes, chief technology officer at StorageCraft. “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 occurred before there was even a failure.”

With HeadStart Restore — or HSR — you set up a system restore “job” in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise to begin the server recovery right away.

ShadowProtect Server continues to back up any incremental changes that are made on the server, which also get sent to the HeadStart Restore job and applied. The Lag Time Apply feature in HSR also allows administrators to delay incremental changes – to account for corruption from malware or a virus. By default, this is set to three days, but this can be changed to suit IT requirements.

In the event of a disaster, the administrator finalizes the restore – which usually takes seconds to apply the incremental updates – then prepares the virtual environment, runs ShadowProtect’s Hardware Independent Restore™ technology, reboots the server, and is back up and running. The elapsed time is several minutes, not several hours. So you’re able to restore a server with even multi-terabytes of data in 15-20 minutes.

“Being able to get a jump on the restore process with HeadStart Restore is a tremendous asset for our business and for our customers,” said Shawn Massey, director of NetAssist at Camera Corner/Connecting Point Computer Center. “We’re able to get servers up and running in a fraction of the time it used to take. Downtime is expensive, and knowing that it won’t take all day or all weekend to rebuild a server is invaluable.”

You can find all kinds of additional information about StorageCraft ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise 4.0 on the ShadowProtect product pages, including data sheets and white papers. Or e-mail sales@storagecraft.com.