Ingram Micro's Solution Centers in Buffalo, N.Y., and Santa Ana, Calif., are staffed by certified engineers on call to answer your questions. Here they provide different perspectives on getting started with disaster recovery.

As a solution provider just getting into disaster recovery solutions, where should I focus my efforts?

Disaster recovery and business continuity solutions provide insurance that a business will continue to operate after a disaster -- and they become more important as systems and networks become more complex. The more things that can go wrong, the more important recovery plans become. The best plans incorporate recovery, of course, but they also cover disaster prevention as well as IT system resiliency.

Securing the IT Environment
Disaster prevention and recovery are part of an overall security strategy, which includes protecting data and the network from malware, as well as ensuring the confidentiality of sensitive information and preventing data loss. There's also the need for physical security such as video surveillance in the data center. A cost-effective surveillance solution for small and midsize customers comes from Cisco Systems, which enables the company's Integrated Services Routers to support a Cisco Video Surveillance network with up to 16 IP and 16 analog videocameras. Cisco has introduced two IP cameras of its own, but the solution supports cameras from many leading manufacturers.

-- Michael Mason, Cisco Solution Center Engineer

Recovering Data and Systems
Disaster recovery includes processes for bringing data back online after a disaster, and for restoring hardware, such as desktop PCs and servers, that may have been lost. Symantec provides these dual capabilities with Symantec Backup Exec and Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery. Backup Exec can back up data from physical servers or unlimited virtual machines to disk or tape with fast and simple data recovery. By capturing an image of system configuration, operating system, applications and data, Backup Exec System Recovery allows systems to be restored either to physical or virtual machines within minutes.

-- Francis Murello, Senior Technical Manager, Solution Centers

Virtualization for Application Recovery
A disaster implies that applications are no longer available, and virtualization technology from Microsoft can help in their recovery. Windows Server 2008 includes the Hyper-V hypervisor, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server, a stand-alone version, is available as a free download. Virtual servers created with Hyper-V are stored as virtual hard disks. If these are backed up or replicated to a separate location, after a disaster they can be restarted in minutes on another Hyper-V server, either at the same location or remotely. In addition, Microsoft's clustering technology for both physical and virtual servers can lessen the possibility of data loss after system failures.

-- Tom Mann, Microsoft Solution Center Engineer