Smartways RecoveryPoint Appliance Uses StorageCraft

StorageCraft Technology Corporation announced that Smartways Technology Ltd, a managed IT provider, has added technology from StorageCraft to its RecoveryPoint Appliance, a backup and BC platform that any business can use.

Smartways RecoveryPoint is a virtualised disaster recovery service offering support for Microsoft Server & Desktop, VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Hyper-V, Apple Macintosh and Linux servers and desktops. The service also provides application recovery using virtualisation technologies for a range of software including Email servers (Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes), Databases (Microsoft SQL, IBM DB2 and Oracle) and collaboration platforms (Microsoft SharePoint and Lotus Domino) as well as CRM, ERP, Webservers and many bespoke applications.

The service uses a localised RecoveryPoint Appliance which sends encrypted backup data to a secure datacentre environment. In the event of a server or application failure, the local appliance with StorageCraft ShadowProtect installed can failover any server as a virtual server in as little as 5 minutes. For customers it’s as if no failure had occurred. In the event of a site loss, RecoveryPoint can deliver the production servers ‘as was’ in a few minutes via secure access through Terminal Services, VPN or Citrix over the internet. This allows any user to continue working from any computer with internet access.

As Mike Rickards, Managing Director for Smartways explains: "One of the key differentiators with our service is support for every type of server, application or endpoint within our clients’ infrastructure. We achieve this by integrating technologies from complementary vendors into our RecoveryPoint Appliance and off-site services. Even after a major hardware failure or site disruption, RecoveryPoint allows organisations to get up and running in 5 minutes, not 5 days."

Rickards selected StorageCraft after he had received interest from clients for localised server-failover to compliment the off-site features.

"To meet this requirement, we selected ShadowProtect because of its built-in VirtualBoot technology that allows us to quickly turn a data backup into a working virtual server instantly, running directly from within our RecoveryPoint Appliance. The addition of ShadowProtect gives us a true any-site recovery solution and creates an extremely compelling business continuity proposition," comments Rickards.

The StorageCraft RecoveryPoint Appliance has been deployed at Pure H2O Company Ltd, a water purification specialist based in Egham.

As Roger Wiltshire, MD and founder of the firm explains: "We have grown rapidly over the last few years and our IT systems are absolutely critical for us. The loss of our e-mail, order processing systems or databases would shut our business down almost instantly and severely impact our customer service."

Wiltshire selected Smartways based on its ability to offer both an off-site and on-site recovery proposition as part of a complete managed IT service. "We met with Smartways and talked to some of their other customers and found that their ability to cover all of our IT requirements combined with a comprehensive business continuity solution ticked all the boxes. Over the last 6 months, the service has proven extremely good value and delivered rock solid reliability to allow us to concentrate on our core business."

Smartways runs server recovery tests on a regular basis to ensure that both remote and local recovery can be achieved, as Rickards comments: "The StorageCraft technology has been a welcome addition to our RecoveryPoint solution and offers our customers more options to meet their business continuity needs."