Tropical Storms are Beginning

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2009 Hurricane Season

70% Chance of having 9 to 14 named storms this 2009 season. Four to 7 of the storms they say could become hurricanes, including 1 to 3 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5). The forecast also cited a 50 percent probability of a near-normal season, a 25 percent probability of an above-normal season and a 25 percent probability of a below-normal season.

For those of you in hurricane paths it would be a good time to consider your off-site backup solution.

10GB to 100TB+ Windows, IBM System i - Backup Restore

UCG and VAULT400 is not a company and product that likes to sit around and watch the world pass us by. So, we have added a few more products and solutions up our sleeves. Besides a direct SaaS solution (VAULT400) we now have Appliances and Software Licencing that can meet the most demanding of you out there. Personally I am excited about the Appliance called Plug-n-Protect. It is just a great all-inclusive system for an enterprise environment. Quick Backups and Restores plus you can replicate offsite with it as well. Pretty cool product for those that need to backup & restore data. Plus, we hit the 6TB, 12TB+ ranges. I'll get more into each solution at a later time. Right now I need to work on sales, website updates and some Data Sheets.

Value-Based DR Article by Jim Kandrac of VAULT400

Jim Kandrac, President of VAULT400 recently published  Value-Based DR Lies in the Space Between Tape and HA for Small and Midsize Organizations

Product News: SystemiNetwork

Product News: UCG and Maximum Availability Offer Tailored DR Capabilities

United Computer Group, Inc. (UCG) and Maximum Availability Limited announce an agreement enabling UCG to incorporate Maximum Availability's *noMAX replication software technology as part of UCG's tiered recovery offering to clients who use Vault400, UCG's data vaulting solution. This agreement enables UCG to provide a fully managed "hot backup" high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) solution utilizing the *noMAX suite alongside Vault400. Customers who need to satisfy a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of one hour or less can deploy *noMAX realtime replication, whereas those who are content with a 12- or 24-hour RTO can use Vault400's shared or dedicated hardware RTO offerings. In both cases, data is replicated directly to highly secured and fully managed data centers. For more information, visit ucgrp.com.

VAULT400 has teamed up with Maximum Availability on a new Managed-Service HA Solution

Companies can be back running in less than an hour with no hardware investment. VAULT400 has teamed up with Maximum Availability on a new managed-service high availability solution that stores data offsite and allows users to pay by the month. What VAULT400 is calling Managed Service High Availability guarantees to restore full service to a customer in one hour or less of notification that its system has gone down. The customer will roll over to the VAULT400 server running the client's pre-installed applications and *noMAX replicated data, and continue operations via a virtual private network. The service is expected to appeal to 20 percent or more of System i (AS/400) users who need a near-term recovery point objective (RPO) and a short recovery time objective (RTO). While the guaranteed one hour is an outside limit of how long it will take VAULT400 to get the customer's system back online, Maximum Availability notes that its software can execute a role swap in only four minutes. VAULT400 announced earlier that it was planning to offer a managed high availability solution, but it didn't say how it was going to accomplish this or what vendor it would team up with to make it happen. "We find the people at Maximum Availability easy to work with, and they clearly see this type of service as complementary to their high availability offerings," said Jim Kandrac, president of United Computer Group, parent of VAULT400.

Updated Web Site

I just visited the new design of the VAULT400 web site...it looks great! I also noted some new offerings from VAULT400. I was particularly curious about the new Option for Hardware Disaster Recovery. In this day of budget challenges, this a great answer for DR site capabilities on a budget you can afford. Here is a quick recap from the their site.