Workplace Recovery Support and Service for

Connectivity to the Internet has emerged as a mission-critical capability for many small businesses. The use of the Internet to distribute information has mushroomed to the point that many organizations are unable to perform day-to-day functions without Internet connectivity.

Traditional applications such as internal email clearly lose much of their value when they can't be used to communicate with customers or vendors, but as organizations increasingly adopt Internet-based information delivery for line-of-business applications, even core functions can grind to a halt when Internet access becomes unavailable.

Until recently, only large organizations could afford to build fully redundant and transparent Internet connections that could survive a failed Internet link or router. Such seamless fault tolerance requires T1-class Internet lines, an option that in the past overstretched the budgets of most small businesses. As T1 prices have dropped to as low as a few $100 per month, and as alternative connections have become available, the opportunity for small businesses to achieve enterprise-class fault tolerance has become economically feasible. But even though the cost for lines has become affordable, the complexity of implementing these solutions has not.

Few small businesses have the in-house expertise required to work effectively with multiple ISPs, coordinate the necessary configuration steps with Internet numbering authority organizations, and implement advanced routing protocols such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP). Progent offers Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) consulting to help you apply the latest connectivity technology to implement a cost-effective fault-tolerant solution.

Today multiple options exist for building automatic and semi-automatic failover solutions. These can involve a mix of T1, DSL and wireless Internet connections. The viability of high-speed fixed-wireless links has recently opened up new alternatives for achieving transparent fault tolerance. By establishing diverse physical paths to the Internet, small businesses gain insurance against costly outages caused by events out of their control, such as a construction crew accidentally digging up phone lines.

As companies rush to deploy VoIP solutions, the potential productivity loss that could result from an interruption in Internet access increases dramatically. This creates another strong incentive to configure a fault-tolerant architecture. Current technologies from Cisco and other networking companies make it possible to build high-availability voice and data solution that have even better uptime potential than conventional voice and data services.

For small business with extremely limited budgets, fault-tolerant failover solutions are possible by utilizing redundant, low-cost DSL services. While not providing all the transparency of more complex and expensive solutions, this alternative can provide significant functionality and avoid costly productivity loss in the event of line failure.

As companies have shifted away from dedicated leased T1 and frame relay lines to Internet-based VPN connections, the demand for fault-tolerant Internet connectivity has accelerated. Businesses can apply the cost savings from retiring legacy leased circuits to upgrading their Internet infrastructure so that they will not only protect their connectivity to remote offices but also the Internet connectivity of office users. Absent those cost savings, many small companies are reluctant to invest in fault-tolerant Internet configurations.

Other Fault Tolerant Solutions Offered by Progent's Experts
Progent's Microsoft and Cisco-certified consulting experts can assist your company to build a cost-effective, fault-tolerant network that resolves critical problems encompassing a wide range of infrastructure technologies and operations including:

Business Continuity Planning
Progent's business continuity planning engineers can help you design a workplace recovery plan so you can restore IT operations in case of an information network catastrophe. Progent can help you to define a complete disaster recovery strategy that incorporates periodic disaster recovery assessments and testing. Progent's Microsoft and Cisco-authorized professionals can also help you create an affordable, non-stop network architecture that takes into account availability issues covering a wide array of network technologies and processes. To read more, visit Disaster Recovery Expertise.

Fully Managed Cloud Backup: ProSight Data Protection Services
ProSight Data Protection Services from Progent offer small and medium-sized businesses a low cost end-to-end service for reliable backup/disaster recovery (BDR). Available at a fixed monthly price, ProSight DPS automates and monitors your backup activities and enables fast restoration of vital files, applications and virtual machines that have become lost or damaged as a result of hardware breakdowns, software bugs, natural disasters, human mistakes, or malicious attacks such as ransomware. ProSight Data Protection Services can help you protect, retrieve and restore files, folders, applications, system images, as well as Hyper-V and VMware images/. Important data can be backed up on the cloud, to an on-promises device, or mirrored to both. Progent's cloud backup consultants can provide world-class support to set up ProSight Data Protection Services to be compliant with government and industry regulatory standards like HIPAA, FIRPA, and PCI and, whenever necessary, can assist you to restore your critical data. Find out more about ProSight Data Protection Services Managed Backup and Recovery.

Microsoft Server 2016 Disaster Recovery
Progent's Windows Server 2016 disaster recovery consultants can assist your organization to plan and deploy a DR solution based on Microsoft's most advanced Failover Clustering technologies such as Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade for non-disruptive migration to Windows Server 2016, Storage Replica for crash-consistent recovery, Storage Spaces Direct for enterprise-class storage clusters using industry-standard equipment, VM Load Balancing for enhancing the performance and resilience of Failover Clusters while reducing TCO and management overhead, and Cloud Witness for fast, affordable creation of a stretch cluster quorum witness. To read more, go to Microsoft Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Support.

Microsoft Server 2012 Failover Clusters
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 introduced enterprise-class availability and recoverability to Microsoft's clustering platform. Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 builds on this technology and delivers important new and enhanced features that offer more scalability, non-stop storage availability for server applications, easier administration, quicker automatic failover, and more flexibility for architecting failover clusters. For more information, go to Windows Server 2012 Clustering Migration and Support.

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Disaster Recovery Solutions
VMware's Site Recovery Manager is a component of VMware vCenter that allows you to define, automate and verify a consistent workflow for restoring services quickly following an outage. Site Recovery Manager provides centrally managed and automated disaster recovery, application mobility, and non-disruptive site migration, failback and site re-protect. SRM also supports non-intrusive testing for site recovery, updates and fixes and can generate audit reports to verify full service restoration, validate SLAs and prove disaster recovery compliance. Progent can provide the skills of a VCDX certified VMware Site Recovery Manager consultant to assist your organization to design, configure, test and administer a disaster recovery solution based on VMware Site Recovery Manager.

NetApp MetroCluster High Availability and Disaster Recovery Software
NetApp MetroCluster is a high-availability and disaster recovery software suite that combines failover storage clustering along with continual replication to deliver fast, zero data loss disaster recovery (DR) between datacenters that are as far as 185 miles apart. Progent offers access to a NetApp MetroCluster expert who can help you to design, configure, manage, upgrade, test and troubleshoot a disaster recovery solution based on NetApp MetroCluster. Progent can help you to choose a topology for your MetroCluster environment that meets your technical requirements and budget. Progent can make sure you adhere to leading practices for configuring your MetroCluster solution by delivering help with procedures like assigning disk pools, arranging plexes layout, setting up NetApp FlexVol volumes, setting up Data ONTAP configuration replication service, provisioning Cisco and Brocade switches, implementing a tiebreaker, designing a configuration replication network between your peered clusters, and verifying your DR solution to show compliance with information assurance standards and government requirements.

Network Load Balancing
Progent provides fault tolerant load balancing support that addresses system load balancing, load balanced applications, LAN/WAN backbone routing, and content delivery technology such as Cisco Content Engine. Fault tolerant load balancing solutions for which Progent can provide consulting services include Windows 2003 and 2008 Server Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Metaframe and Access Gateway, Cisco Content Services Switch, Cisco Content Distribution Manager and Cisco CDN Software, and F5 Networks BIG-IP. To read more, go to Non-stop Load Balancing.

High-Availability Data Centers
Progent's Data Center engineers can help you select zero-downtime data centers that meet the specific needs of your company. Fault tolerant colocation sites are particularly appealing to small and mid-size companies due to of their affordability and simplified logistics compared to taking a do-it-yourself approach. Attempting to build an in-house data center that offers even a basic level of fault tolerance is too costly for the majority of small businesses. Progent is ready to help you get all the benefits of high-availability colo centers by providing a full array of engineering and support services. For details, go to Fault Tolerant Internet Data Centers Consulting.

24x7 Inter-office Networking
Progent’s branch office connectivity engineers can help organizations create non-stop branch office connectivity solutions via fully redundant networks featuring automatic failover. Progent’s Cisco-premier CCIE engineers can design and deploy fault-tolerant Inter-office connections supported by non-stop EIGRP routers or fault tolerant OSPF deployment of Cisco routers. Progent can demonstrate how multi-path connectivity and transparent fail-over can provide economical 24x7 interoffice networking. To find out more, visit Failsafe Interoffice Connectivity.

Backup and Restore Technology Consulting
Progent offers economical online access to engineers skilled in a broad array of products and technologies that provide solutions for protecting Windows, Mac, and Linux/UNIX servers and workstations as well as notebooks and smartphones. Progent can provide help for leading backup platforms including Acronis, Symantec Backup Exec, BackupAssist Software, CrashPlan PRO, Double-Take Backup, Mozy, Retrospect, Apple Time Machine, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), and Solaris FLARs. Progent's consultants can assist your company to install, upgrade, or maintain backup systems for a range of architectures such as on-premises, remote, cloud, or hybrid. To read more, see Backup and Recovery Solutions Consulting Services.

System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) Backup and Recovery Consultants
Progent's expert Microsoft SCDPM support professionals can assist you to create an effective business continuity plan, design an affordable fault-tolerante IT architecture, deploy a SCDPM-based backup and restore system, comprehensively validate your system, educate your administrative personnel or local consultants how to maintain System Center Data Protection Manager, or provide extensive information technology outsourcing services including off-site hosting of virtual or physical SCDPM servers in Progent's data center facility. For more information, visit System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) Consulting.

Barracuda Backup Multi-site and Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery
Barracuda Backup is a low-cost, subscription-based backup and disaster recovery platform for small and mid-size businesses. A Barracuda Backup solution can include a purpose-built physical storage device built by Barracuda or a software-based appliance with similar functionality but which uses your own storage infrastructure. Barracuda Backup safeguards vital business data produced locally, at one or more remote sites, or in the cloud. For disaster protection, you can replicate data to the Barracuda Cloud, to Amazon Web Services (AWS), or to any location with a Barracuda Backup appliance. Progent is a Barracuda partner and Progent's Barracuda Backup consultants offer a broad array of consulting services to help your business to design, integrate, manage and repair a backup and disaster recovery solution built on Barracuda Backup. For additional information, go to Barracuda Backup and disaster recovery consulting and management.

Altaro VM Backup Software for Backup and Disaster Recovery
Altaro VM Backup software provides small and mid-size organizations a reliable and budget-friendly platform for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-based VMs. Altaro VM Backup can be used for local, offsite, distributed, and cloud-hosted architectures and also enables low-cost cloud backup to Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage. Top features include state-of-the-art Augmented Inline Deduplication to cut backup storage requirements, Continuous Data Protection (CDP) with backup spacing as low as five minutes for minimizing your Recovery Point Objective (RPO), advanced encryption, item-level restore capability for specific files and emails, extensive support for Windows Server Cluster Shared Volumes and for VMware vCenter for managing large-scale environments, and the ability to leverage Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service to back up live virtual machines without downtime. Progent is a certified Altaro partner and can provide a broad array of services to assist you to plan, deploy, manage and troubleshoot a backup/restore solution powered by Altaro VM Backup. To find out more, visit Altaro VM Backup Consulting.

Consulting for Double-Take Software for Backup and Recovery
Double-Take publishes a family of products intended to deliver small companies a variety of affordable solutions for replicating and recovering vital workloads including Exchange, Microsoft SQL, Blackberry, and Microsoft Office SharePoint. Progent’s disaster recovery planning consultants have in-depth backgrounds incorporating Double-Take Software technology into small company information networks to achieve an advanced level of fault tolerance and disaster recovery readiness at an affordable price. For details, visit Consulting for Double-Take Software for Data Backup.

CRISC-Premier Network Risk Control
The CRISC certification program was initiated by ISACA to validate an IT professional's skills to plan, implement, and maintain information system control mechanisms to mitigate risk. Progent offers the services of a CRISC-certified engineer to assist you to develop and carry out a workplace continuity or disaster recovery plan based on industry best practices identified by CRISC and crafted to align with your organization's risk appetite, business goals, and budgetary guidelines. For details, visit CRISC-Premier network risk control experts.

Why Pick Progent for Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning?
Since Progent is a Microsoft Certified Partner and offers high-level application support for a wide range of small business applications, Progent is able to assist customers to arrive at comprehensive IT solutions that optimize the productivity of your network. As a Registered Partner for Cisco, Progent offers the expertise of certified consultants and specialists with expertise in designing, installing and maintaining networking environments built on Cisco products. The breadth of Progent's IT experience and Progent's appreciation for the requirements of small and midsize companies make Progent the ideal resource for building and maintaining an affordable, fault-tolerant information system.

How to Get in Touch with Progent's Experts for Fault Tolerant Network Services
To contact Progent about engineering assistance for high availability computing, phone 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.