After Switching from Acronis to AppAssure, IT Pro Achieves Lightning-Fast Recovery

Oct. 27, 2010 - PRLog -- AppAssure Software, Inc., a provider of innovative Windows server backup and disaster recovery software, announced today that American HealthTech, a software developer and provider for long-term health care providers located in Ridgeland, MS, switched to AppAssure’s flagship backup and recovery product, Replay 4, to take advantage of Replay’s intuitive administrative console and to achieve lightning-fast recovery of mission-critical data.

Danny Welch, the corporate systems manager at American HealthTech, kept stumbling over one key element in his backup and recovery solution: Why were admin consoles on the products he used not at all intuitive?  “When you’re trying to recover something for someone,” explains Welch, “this is the piece that makes or breaks everything in terms of speed.”  

As the corporate systems manager, Welch is on the front line when it comes to knowing disaster recovery and backup products.  American HealthTech started with Veritas Backup Exec, and most of its clients were on Backup Exec, but for Welch, it wasn’t enough. “It worked for awhile - until our backups got large — really large.  We wanted the disaster recovery product to capture more – not just the data, but the whole machine.” So Welch and his team switched to Acronis True Image. And again, for awhile, that worked too.

But as Welch explains, “We liked it well enough and were able to restore from single files all the way to the entire server, which was great…. but as it turns out, Acronis had tools that ran separately and the interface wasn’t intuitive.”  That meant that Welch had to spend precious time figuring out how to dig down and retrieve what he needed before he could actually go get the information he wanted.

Then he came across AppAssure Replay.

“The admin console made all the difference,” says Welch. “There’s no question that Acronis’ True Image Server was similar to Replay in some of their backup processes, but the winning feature was the ability to click a server and then choose a recovery point and explore.  It’s that instant mounting that was the win.”

So now Welch doesn’t have to figure out how to do something when it needs doing, he just does it.

“Shortly after we’d had Replay running, we got a call from one of our programmers. He implemented a script that ran at 1 a.m. and it blew up. Support called and phone lines were going crazy,” explains Welch. “Development comes in and says, ‘Can you give me a snapshot from right before and after the script ran?’  Normally I cringe because I just can’t get it that quickly or that close. But with Replay, I was able to go in and get one image from midnight and then one from 2am.  I quickly copied these two database versions to his desktop; he was able figure out the problem just like that.”

For Welch and his team, grabbing data that fast is like magic. “There’s just no way to describe the feeling of getting the information, or the stuff people need in that amount of time,” muses Welch.  “I can even do it while I’m on the phone with them!”

But make no mistake about it; the user interface is just the icing on the cake, as far as Welch is concerned.  The cake, so to speak, is the entire suite of impressive features that Welch and his team think is fantastic. “We’ve restored entire servers.  We’ve had a bug/corruption in an Exchange server and had to recover the entire mail store. We’ve done mailboxes, messages, folders, and exported PST (files) for legal discovery. We’ve tested in every imaginable way,” Welch says. “The deduplication/decompression works almost like magic the way it bundles the recovery points and then rolls them up on schedule.”

After another laugh, Welch says something most IT folks wish they could say. “It’s made backups fun!”

Since American HealthTech is almost a fully virtualized environment, Welch uses AppAssure’s  flexible licensing — paying for the host and not by the client — which allows the company to give its clients what they need, backing up only what it needs. “Our clients want a bundled solution and they want our recommendation about what’s best to use for their company. Since we want to recommend good products to clients, it’s helpful if we know them first,” says Welch.

Welch has given his full endorsement to the company to begin recommending Replay to its clients.  

“Our clients’ applications live and die by SQL,” Welch notes. “I’d recommend Replay for SQL, especially for the smaller, single facilities where we are their only IT staff. I could tell them that in a disaster recovery situation, we can go in, get the table, database, or whole server, if need be.  And if a client is still on tape,” Welch adds, “well, that’s a nightmare!  I’d say the entire process of Replay is faster than just getting the tape into the machine and getting started."

Now Welch tells everyone about the fun he’s having with backups. “Get it!  No question — it is the best backup product I’ve ever used. Nothing is even close.  We’ve used a lot of products, but nothing touches this!”

Companies can download a free 14-day trial of the award-winning Replay 4 at:
http://landing.appassure.com/Replay4_14_Day_Trial.html?Le...

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About AppAssure Software
AppAssure Software is a provider of innovative backup and disaster recovery software purpose-built for Windows applications. Designed to protect the applications, not just the data, AppAssure solutions deliver high-value features for reliable data protection that is corruption-free. As a result, IT administrators can have the confidence that their Windows applications are completely protected and easily recoverable in the event of data loss or disaster. AppAssure’s flagship product, Replay 4 is an application-aware, disk-based imaging solution that automatically and continuously images your entire Windows application server delivering accelerated application backups and disaster recovery for Windows servers in minutes. For more information about AppAssure Software, visit http://www.appassure.com.