With increasing data volumes and companies' growing reliance on the information stored within their computer systems, the risk posed by a system crash or any other form of IT outage has become potentially devastating.
Although a number of extremely reliable backup solutions have come to the fore over the years, some with the ability to completely automate an organisation's data protection strategy, unfortunately these have remained largely out of the reach of micro and small businesses.
"Beyond cost, many of these smaller organisations have been stuck in the difficult position of having barely enough IT resources to manage their existing line of business systems, let alone enough capacity to manually implement a backup strategy," explains Greg Pothitos, HP server and storage product manager at Tarsus Technologies.
"Noting this challenge," Pothitos says, "HP has responded with a product that solves SMEs' server and workstation backup issues quickly and cost-effectively."
The product, named RDX Removable Disk Backup System, falls under HP's StorageWorks portfolio of solutions and, according to Pothitos, combines the best features of tape (removable, portable, rugged media) and disk (fast, random access and rapid capacity growth) with the simplicity of universal USB connectivity.
"The product itself consists of a 2.5-inch mobile SATA disk drive encapsulated in a robust and rugged cartridge that is designed for use with a USB docking station, either internal or external, to back up a workstation or server. Capacities currently supported include 160GB and 320GB," Pothitos explains.
"Because the solution uses industry-standard hard disk technology, driver and compatibility issues are kept to a minimum," he continues.
"Backing up becomes a simple matter of inserting the removable RDX disk cartridge into the docking station (the cartridge will automatically show up as a letter drive in Windows Explorer with no extra formatting or extra steps), selecting the files that need to be protected and dragging them into the removable drive folder.
“To restore files, users simply reverse the process," he says.
For more advanced automated backups, simple scheduled or "hands-free" continuous data backup can be performed through the solution's support of continuous data protection (CDP) software and standard ISV backup applications.
"In fact," Pothitos says, "the solution comes bundled with HP StorageWorks RDX Continuous Data Protection software which brings industry-leading features such as disk snapshots, CDP, file revisions, de-duplication, bare-metal recovery and simple media management together in an exceptionally easy-to-use, set-and-forget package.
"We're expecting this product to gain an extremely healthy following in the micro and small business market, which in my opinion, has been neglected for too long.
"It truly is the simplest and one of the most cost-effective backup solutions for companies of this size," he concludes.
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