CMS Introduces Bootable Server BackupCMS Introduces Bootable Server Backup

For businesses of any size, a server disk failure can catastrophic. The threat is even greater for smaller companies with limited IT resources; a disk failure can mean waiting hours or even days for an IT service call. In the meantime, the business grinds to a halt, losing revenue by the minute, and turning customers into former customers.

To help small businesses and others resume business quickly in the event of a server disk failure or other disk problems, CMS Products has introduced its new BounceBack Instant Server Recovery Solutions product family, based on CMS's BounceBack Server Edition software. BounceBack Instant Server Recovery is designed for small-to-midsize businesses with servers running Microsoft's Foundation or Small Business Server operating systems, to "ensure business continuity during server hard drive failures, or catastrophic data loss," according to the company.

"BounceBack Instant Server Recovery is aimed at companies with three to ten users, like one with a point-of-sale system, and no IT people on-site," says Gary Streuter, Vice President of Marketing, CMS Products. "They can reboot and get running again while waiting for an IT consultant to be available to identify and resolve the problem on the main drive.

The backup, according to Streuter, clones the system drive as a bootable file-by-file copy, including the operating system, other software, settings, and data." The user then configures BounceBack to do backups on a scheduled basis, such as every evening. (Backups can also be manually triggered.)

Like with CMS' BounceBack Ultimate product for use with Windows desktop and notebook computers, in the event of a problem with the hard drive, "Your server offers to boot from an internal drive or the recovery device," says Streuter. "Select the BounceBack, and it launches." Since the backup is a file-by-file copy, if the server cannot reboot, users can access, browse and retrieve data by treating the BounceBack device as an external hard drive, says Streuter. "You can plug it into another computer and get to all the data files."

If one of the two drives is removed and a fresh one is put in, "The system will rebuilt itself onto the other drive and keep them in synch," says Streuter. This lets the removed drive be taken off-site, for added disaster recovery protection. CMS offers a kit with an additional disk caddy, plus a carrying case, for taking disks off-site.

Other features include backup support for SQL databases. According to Streuter, a backup module for Microsoft Exchange is scheduled for later this year.

BounceBack Instant Server Recovery is available now. The software-only version is MSRP $295. The hardware/software bundle, consisting of the software and a 2-bay desktop enclosure supporting RAID 0 and 1 is MSRP $599 with two 1-terabyte SATA hard drives, or $799 with two 2-terabyte SATA hard drives.