Getting your desktops and servers back on-line fast is critical and doing complete reloads is long and tedious work. Imaging software is the right choice to get your systems back on track in the shortest time. I know that Agility offers this service however for you do-it yourselfers, be sure to choose imaging software that allows you to restore an image to dissimilar hardware.
For example, you have an office full of Dell computers that are 3 years old, loaded with Windows XP and all of your applications like Office and line of business programs. You’ve used imaging software to capture an image of a fully loaded computer so that you can restore should the computer have a disk crash or something of that nature. However if you have to buy an all new system, the 3 years that have gone by mean that most of the guts of the new system have changed enough that when you restore that old image, all your going to get at boot-up is the dreaded blue screen of death.
Luckily, there are offerings from Acronis and Persystent, to name two, that allow you to make images of one computer and restore to one with considerably different hardware. In most cases, all you might need to do is add some drivers during the image restore process and you’re good to go.
Many people swear by Symantec’s Norton Ghost as a great imaging software package, however, as of this writing, it doesn’t have the ability to restore to dissimilar hardware. I should qualify that you may be successful, it just depends on how dissimilar the hardware is. I have also heard of a 3rd party package that works with Ghost to give it that capability.
I hope this provides a little guidance.