Getting back on track after a server disaster.

With today's reliance on computers and databases, software that backs up digital information is becoming vital. Jason Buffington of NSI Software, a company that provides data replication and other computer services for business, offers pointers on what all companies--big and small--should consider to ensure their computers stay up and running.

"There's no such thing as being too small for data protection. You could have a 10-user office, like a doctor's office or an accountant firm, and if the server goes down the office screeches to a halt. (Many companies) just do tape backup every night--popping in a tape to make a duplicate of the server. But a server could go down first thing in the morning or it could go down at the end of the day, in which case you lost a day's worth of work. The only way to shrink that loss is to protect more often. But tape is expensive and it takes manpower and intervention to replace it.

"If I was going to go to a small company today with 50 to 100 users the first step would be to get a storage server--a Windows server that comes out of the box ready to run. Small businesses don't have the time to figure out the technology. Go to your favorite vendor and get a storage server. Assume you'll pay the average rate of a server--about $2,000. Then find cheap floor space. Set it up at the owners' house if he has a high speed connection or somewhere that is an appreciable distance from the business and on a different grid.

"Another option is real time replication, where literally a millisecond after a file has been changed on your server another server on the planet will get those changes. Then, an employee could connect to a server in a remote location to continue whatever they were doing at work.

"Often, companies think that business recovery processes are very grandiose. They think that first you need months of planning and big binders that say how to re-build everything from scratch if the system broke down. Many disaster plans have that kind of approach but what if it takes four or five months to document all the stuff and three months into it there's the forest fire, the hurricane or the power outage? Don't wait for the big fancy binder and don't think that you're too small; it's too cheap to not do it. If you later want to go and get a binder, that's fine."

Case Study is a new feature in which experts offer advice on the various challenges that small-business owners often encounter. If you face an issue or challenge you think applies to others as well, please contact the Business Journal at [e-mail].