Disaster Strikes: System Lost. Data Lost. Settings Lost. Hours Lost. Customer upset or GONE!
We have all been there before, as IT professionals or as PC users: a system that worked perfectly hours ago is now unrecoverable.
What happened? An application error, user error, malware, an administrator error, an operating system error, a driver error, etc. The reasons are many. The result is the same: instead of a working system, you now have an unusable box in your data center or company.
What to do? If you use LinMin, you're back on-line in minutes!
- Point your browser to the LinMin server and select the system that failed
- Click "Restore"
- Reboot the system. THAT'S ALL! In a few minutes, you're back on-line!!!
Can You afford LinMin? YES!
LinMin costs $10 per system for an environment with 100 systems! Or only $6 per system if you have 1000 boxes. That's right. Only $6 per system! Review the LinMin Price List
A Better Question: Can You Afford NOT to buy LinMin? NO!
- Without LinMin (even if you have a backup of your user data files), here's what you need to do to bring the system back to its last known-good state:
- Locate your original OS DVD or CD
- Install your OS (Windows or Linux) and Reboot
- Set up your system to connect to the Internet
- Locate, download and install all your device drivers
- Locate, download and install your OS security and other updates. Reboot
- Download and install more OS updates. Reboot
- Time check: how many hours have gone by? Time to get creative: how will you explain why it's taking so long to your user/customer?
- Locate your list of installed applications
- Install your first application
- Update your first application
- Configure your first application (settings, file locations, etc.)
- Install your next application
- Update your next application
- Configure your next application
- Time check: how many hours have gone by?
- Locate and download all your plug-ins and free applications (Adobe Reader, Zip, etc.)
- Restore your data files from backup (verify integrity, database access, file locations, etc.)
- Test your first application: can you open/close files. Are your templates set correctly? Can you print correctly? Can you export data? Do reports work? Etc.
- Test your next application (files, print, export, reports, etc.)
- Time check: how many hours have gone by? 6 to 12 hours so far!!!
- Create user accounts. Set user permissions. Configure firewall settings. Configure OS update times and frequency. What else? The list goes on and on...
- You're getting close to "giving the system back" to the user/customer. What's the excuse again? Earthquake. No, that won't work. Power failure? Plausible. Not using LinMin? That's it!
- Get your credit card, order LinMin, download and install LinMin. And do a bare metal backup now, so you won't have to spend a full day the next time a system goes bad!
- Repeat until your OS is current:
- Repeat until all your applications are installed and updated:
- Repeat until all your applications have been tested and are ready for use:
Next Step: Review LinMin pricing, then Order LinMin or Test Drive LinMin for Free
Windows Provisioning Module for Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7
The Small Print
LinMin performs disk imaging (backup, restore/rollback, clone to like hardware) at the bare metal level: it captures and restores the master boot record, all partitions and every bit stored on your disks. All settings, all installed applications, all data, everything. It's like taking a photograph of the disk, storing it on the network, and then restoring it just the way it was when the photo (image) was taken. All applications and all services on the system are stopped, ensuring the highest level of data and application integrity. LinMin is similar to Norton Ghost® except that LinMin runs on many more operating systems and works over the network. Furthermore, LinMin doesn't require that you install any software on each system (it's "agent-less"), and costs a lot less!
Using LinMin's imaging is not a substitute for IT best practices including regular backups of your data using traditional backup and restore software. The 2 approaches complement each other very well. If your system must be available 24x7x365, then LinMin is not the solution for you as the system must be taken offline for a few minutes when disk image backup is performed. Certain hardware RAID are not supported: in case of doubt on your hardware RAID, evaluate LinMin for free to make sure that LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning and Imaging performs as desired before you buy it.
