Technology rental for Disaster Recovery, Short-term, testing and more.

I watched a movie recently called “Outsourced”. One of the parts that made me chuckle was when the manager visited the increasingly successful call center in India to find the employees there knee deep in Water. There were people sitting on desks and computer shorting out before someone took the initiative to move everyone and everything to a dryer locale.

There are surprisingly few companies who consider Disaster Recovery as a part of their day to day business management.

What would you do if (heaven forbid) your building were to burn down? what would happen if there were some sort of emergency in your IT Department?
Office space is rather easy to find. There are companies who lease ‘spare’ office space specifically for Disaster Recovery operations. The IT Equipment however, isn’t so easily recovered, moved and temporarily replaced.

Desktop computers are easily replaced, they’re relatively inexpensive and shouldn’t have a lot of mission critical data on them (if your network and staff are using everything correctly). Email and many applications now depend largely on servers. Even logging on to a computer attached to an office network can’t be done without a server. Phone systems, internet servers, web filters, accounting systems and more all need servers.

You diligently back up your server data every night and lock the tapes away (hopefully far away). What will you do when it comes to crunch time though? What will you restore the data back onto should something go horribly wrong?

It’s good to have a company on hand, form a partnership if you will who can supply replacement technology equal to or greater than what you’re currently using. A huge part of your Disaster recovery plan and top of your call list should be: (eg)

• Call Insurance Company
• Call Canvas Systems and have them expedite shipment preplanned server systems to X building
• Relocate staff to X building

The company you choose to work with is very, very important. High-end, mission critical servers can’t just be picked up at your local electronics store.
You need to be able to make a call to a company who will respond any time of day, any time of the year and have what you need, shipped out to you, when you need it.

Is it god to use a local company? Consider this – what if there was a local disaster/emergency. Flooding, earthquake, hurricane, tornado, etc. It’s often god to use local companies but it’s not good to put all of your eggs into the same regional basket.

Don’t forget though, IT Equipment rental isn’t just for when things go horribly wrong, equipment rentals can save you a lot of time and money when things are going right too. If your systems get seasonally crazy it’s a good idea to rent so that you’re not paying for the resources year-round.

It’s a marvelous idea to rent equipment before you upgrade your entire infrastructure. Give it all a test before you decide to commit. See if what you’re planning will actually work for your enterprise, on your network. See if the machines you’re speccing have the resources to do what you need to do before buying them and realizing that they don’t. Prove the concept before sinking your time, money and resources into it.

Companies like Canvas Systems are great to use a ‘Go To’ companies . It’s good to know that you have a connection, ready to go, should you need it.

Learn more about Disaster Recovery Rentals here
Get information on IT rentals as a whole here

[Canvas Systems was kind enough to sponsor this post. I mean every word of it though 🙂  ]