VDI specialist IMSCAD has launched a desktop disaster recovery solution aimed at providing companies with a cost-effective back-up for virtual desktops / workstations in addition to data.

IMSCAD is positioning the new solution as an insurance policy for customers of physical on-premise environments or datacentre hosted virtual solutions. According to the company, most customers implement structured redundancy measures for their infrastructure and critical data, but that does not necessarily extend to desktops.

With “pay if you use” service on Microsoft Azure customers only pay for the virtual desktops in the event of a disaster

IMSCAD’s desktop disaster recovery solution uses Microsoft Azure on a ‘Pay If You Use’ basis, so customers only pay for the virtual desktops in the event of a disaster and the only recurring expenditure is for the infrastructure and storage. This is in contrast to replicating the entire physical capacity in a datacenter, where firms have to commit to substantial costs for hardware that could potentially sit there for years and never be used.

According to IMSCAD CEO Adam Jull, everything is in sync with a firm’s current Microsoft licensing, so they run on the same tenant and maintain the integrity of logins and passwords etc.

As part of the service IMSCAD offers scheduled periodic disaster recovery scenario tests for peace of mind.

Once desktop failback has completed, all running instances except for that of the infrastructure will be turned off and deallocated, keeping costs to a minimum.