Many companies use tape devices to backup critical data in the event of a server failure.
While data backups are a very important part of a company's IT strategy, most companies overlook the time, resources, lost revenue, and the potential for lost customers experienced during the downtime required for restoring a system. Traditional methods of restoring both the data and software components of a server could take as long as 4 to 10 hours to return a system back to its original state. While component replacement may only take a few minutes, the installation of the operating system and restoring system data will require the most time. Take Windows NT 4.0 for example. It takes approximately 3 hours to install this operating system, alone.