Web Host INetU Defends Disaster

• By theWHIR.com , January 18, 2006

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By Justin Lee, theWHIR.com

January 18, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- If the tragic impact of September's Hurricane Katrina revealed anything about Web hosting, it is that many companies are still without a sound disaster recovery system.

Many businesses were left stranded without a functional Web site after a large percentage of New Orleans-based data companies were taken offline by the hurricane.

According to Allentown, Pennsylvania-based managed hosting provider INetU (inetu.com), of the data companies hit by Katrina that did have disaster recovery plans in place, only 10 percent were successful in rolling over because the people in charge of executing those plan were incapacitated by Katrina.

INetU has set out to make disaster recovery an important and viable component of its own offerings by introducing its Business Continuity Hot Site service.

The disaster recovery service provides business Web sites with a mirrored server at another location, ensuring that, in the event of a disaster, they will be able to switch over to INetU's hot site location.

The backup servers are located at Equinix's data center in Secaucus, New Jersey. They are managed and kept up-to-date in a manner similar to those at INetU's primary facility.

INetU contracted an outside company to house its backup servers to reassure customers that if the company ever experienced an organizational problem, such as bankruptcy, their data would be kept safely.

"We thought through so many angles, so many problem scenarios," says Dev Chanchani, president of INetU.  "And that's why, ultimately, we didn't put it in our own data center that's removed geographically, but someone else's data center."

The hot site is 110 miles away from the primary facility, exceeding government guidelines that suggest a standard distance of 90 miles for a disaster recovery site.

The price of the Hot Site service is roughly 50 to 75 percent of the cost that INetU customers spend on their regular managed hosting costs.

Additionally, INetU instructs clients with regard to code changes and other business process changes needed to perform a more seamless transition to the hot site.

Customers can work alongside INetU to put together disaster recovery plans that are customized to their businesses, and provide them with ability to execute the disaster recovery themselves in the event of a catastrophe.

"What we're talking about is that not only do we have a plan," says Chanchani, "but your servers are already set up, installed and configured, and all of the ducks are lined up in a row, so that in a disaster all you have to do is move the site."

Chanchani says many managed hosting providers that claim to offer disaster recovery services are only "approaching disaster recovery halfway."

"These [hosting providers] can restore your data and databases because you've made backups offsite," he says, "but they don't take [certain aspects] into account: what are they going to store that software and data on? Where are they going to get thousands of servers for their clients in under a week? Where are they going to get data center space to get it all up in a week?"

"Our DR option takes some time to put into place," he says, "but it is a good one."

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