LightChange Technologies
    A technician inspecting server hardware at a cabled equipment rack
    Systems Infrastructure

    IT infrastructure services that come back fast.

    Your servers, your storage, and your backups are what the whole operation sits on. The question that matters is the one most teams have never tested: when one of them fails, how fast are you back? We build the systems and the recovery behind them so you come back in hours.

    The restore question

    The backup ran fine. But would it restore?

    Every morning the backup job reports success. Green check, email sent, on to the next thing. That report tells you the job ran. It does not tell you the server will come back from it, and the only way to know is to try, on a real restore, before the day you need it.

    That day tends to arrive without warning. A drive array fails, a server won't boot, ransomware reaches the file shares. The team reaches for the recovery plan and finds out it was a document no one had ever tested. The backup that ran every night turns out to be missing the one system that mattered, or it restores so slowly that four hours of downtime becomes four days. The cost was never the lost hardware. It was the operation sitting idle while everyone waited.

    Over two decades of building and recovering systems for operations where downtime is the thing you manage all day means we have run these restores when it counted. We design the servers, the storage, and the recovery so a failure costs you a few hours of work instead of a week you spend explaining.

    A technician working at an open server rack, one hand on the cabling and a monitor and keyboard on a cart beside him
    What we do

    Four things that decide how fast you recover.

    Here is what keeps your systems running, and what gets them back quickly when they don't.

    Servers and storage sized to the work.

    Server infrastructure and enterprise storage sized to the workload your operation runs, with room to grow. We right-size the compute and storage, virtualize with VMware where that makes sense, and keep firmware and patching current through ongoing server management. When the workload can't tolerate slow storage or downtime, we bring in EverPure, our Pure Storage-based enterprise storage, or Nutanix where hyperconverged infrastructure makes the build simpler to run. The result is hardware that earns its place and does not surprise you eighteen months in.

    Backups that come back when you call on them.

    Backup and disaster recovery built around one question: will it restore? We build it on Veeam for backup and replication, set what gets protected and how often, keep a copy off-site and out of reach of whatever hits the primary, and verify recovery through Overwatch, our monitoring overlay, so a failed or stale backup gets flagged before you need it. A tested restore is the only kind worth having.

    A recovery plan with real numbers.

    We set recovery targets you can defend: how fast you come back (your RTO) and how much data you can afford to lose (your RPO), tied to what each system is worth to the operation. From there we build to hit them, including disaster recovery as a service for the systems that have to come back first. Business continuity stops being a binder and becomes a plan the team has run.

    Someone watching so you hear it first.

    Through Overwatch we watch the servers, the storage, and the backup health, and flag a failing drive or a missed backup before it becomes an outage. Patching and server care stay current in the background. You find out from us, with time to act, rather than from a user when the system is already down.

    Where to start

    What a recovery plan has to cover, and how we build one.

    Most recovery plans fail in the same few places: the targets were never set, the backups were never restored, and the plan was never run. A real plan answers a short list of questions in advance, so the day of an outage is a matter of execution.

    What a disaster recovery plan has to cover

    What you are protecting, ranked.

    Not every system comes back at the same speed. The plan lists what runs the operation, what can wait, and the order they return in.

    Your recovery targets.

    How fast each system has to be back (RTO) and how much data you can afford to lose (RPO). These two numbers drive every other decision in the plan.

    Where the backups live.

    A copy off-site or in the cloud, far enough from the primary that one event can't take both. Restored at least once on purpose, so you know the copy works.

    Who does what.

    The plan names who declares the recovery, who runs it, and who gets told, so nobody is guessing at 2 a.m.

    How often it gets tested.

    A plan that has never been run is a guess. Real plans get rehearsed on a schedule, and the results change the plan.

    How an engagement runs

    1. 1

      Assess

      We look at what you'd lose and how fast you need it back, the current backup setup, and when a full restore was last proven to work. You get a findings summary you keep, whether or not the work continues with us.

    2. 2

      Set targets

      We work out the RTO and RPO for each system with you, ranked by what the operation can't run without, so the plan matches the business instead of a generic template.

    3. 3

      Build

      We put the backup, replication, and recovery in place to hit those targets, including disaster recovery as a service where a system has to come back fast, with an off-site copy out of reach of the primary.

    4. 4

      Test

      We run the restore, measure how long it takes against the target, and fix what the test exposes. Then we keep testing on a schedule, because systems change and a plan has to keep up.

    How we work

    We do the work with your team, and we teach as we go.

    • We train your team on what we're doing.Your people should come out of every project more capable than they went in. Dependency is not our business model.
    • You get direct access to the engineer doing the work.No account manager in the middle. The person you talk to knows your systems.
    • We're transparent about what things cost.Hardware, licensing, labor. When a different approach saves you money, we say so.
    • We'd rather earn your business than lock it in.Most of our clients have stayed with us more than a decade, by choice.
    Rows of industrial cooling towers on a facility rooftop
    Sectors we specialize in

    Built for utilities, municipalities, and the teams that can't afford to stay down.

    We build and recover systems for the operators communities run on, where an outage reaches the public and downtime is measured in lost service to a community.

    Electric utilities and cooperatives.

    Servers and storage for billing, SCADA support systems, and operational data, with recovery targets set for sites that can't go quiet. Backups proven by a real restore.

    Municipalities and county governments.

    City systems, public safety records, and the data residents depend on, protected on a public budget. Continuity planning that holds up to an audit and a board's questions.

    Water and wastewater authorities.

    Systems and backups for treatment and operations run by small teams with wide footprints, where a recovery has to be simple enough to run shorthanded.

    ISPs and telecom providers.

    Server and storage infrastructure for provisioning, billing, and customer systems, with recovery built for operations their subscribers count on around the clock.

    Manufacturing.

    The systems behind production scheduling, historians, and operations, recovered fast enough to keep a line from sitting idle. Backups designed for a plant environment.

    Growing enterprises.

    Server and storage builds that have outgrown their original design, with the assessment and recovery plan that tell you where you stand and what to fix first.

    Common questions

    What teams ask before they call us about backup and recovery.

    Backup and disaster recovery is the combination of keeping protected copies of your data and having a tested process to get your systems running again after a failure. Backup is the copy. Disaster recovery is the plan and the practice that turns that copy back into a working server inside a time you've decided on in advance. One without the other leaves a gap: a backup nobody can restore quickly, or a plan with no clean copy to restore from. At LightChange we design both together, with the restore proven on a schedule rather than assumed.
    A disaster recovery plan should cover five things. First, what you're protecting, ranked by how fast each system has to come back. Second, your recovery targets: your RTO (how fast you need to be running) and your RPO (how much data you can afford to lose). Third, where the backups live, including an off-site or cloud copy out of reach of whatever hits the primary. Fourth, who does what during a recovery, so nobody is guessing under pressure. Fifth, how often the plan gets tested, since an untested plan is only a theory until you run it. We build each of these with you and rehearse the restore so the plan holds up on the day it's needed.
    Business continuity and disaster recovery are related but not the same. Disaster recovery is how you get your IT systems back after a failure: the backups, the recovery targets, the restore process. Business continuity is the wider plan for keeping the operation running through a disruption, including the people, the processes, and the workarounds while systems come back. Disaster recovery is the technical core that business continuity depends on. We focus on the recovery side and design it to fit the continuity plan your organization runs.
    You create a disaster recovery plan in four steps. Start by listing your systems and ranking them by how fast each one has to come back. Set a recovery target for each: an RTO for speed and an RPO for acceptable data loss. Build the backup and recovery to hit those targets, with a copy kept off-site or in the cloud. Then test the plan with a real restore, measure how long the restore takes in practice, and fix what the test exposes. The last step is the one most plans skip, and it's the one that decides whether the plan works. We run this process with your team and keep testing on a schedule as your systems change.
    RTO and RPO are the two numbers that shape a recovery plan. RTO, recovery time objective, is how fast a system has to be back after a failure: minutes, hours, or a day. RPO, recovery point objective, is how much data you can afford to lose, set by how much time passes between backups. Together they decide how often you back up, where the backups live, and how much to invest in fast recovery for each system. We set both with you, ranked by what the operation can't run without, so the spend matches the stakes.
    Most providers sell you a backup product and a support contract and call it disaster recovery. We design the recovery around the numbers that matter to your operation, prove the restore works by running it, and hand over the reasoning so your team can run it without us. You're never locked into our stack or left trusting a backup nobody has tested. We also tell you when a system doesn't need the most expensive recovery tier, which a product-driven shop rarely will.
    We work alongside your team. We take on the systems design, the recovery planning, and the depth your team doesn't need every day, and we teach as we go so your team comes out stronger. The servers, the backups, and the plan stay something they can run.
    We'd rather earn your business than lock it in. We steer away from long contracts unless a project genuinely calls for one. Most of our clients have stayed with us more than a decade, by choice.
    An Infrastructure Review is a scoped look at the systems your operation runs on, starting with what you'd lose and how fast you'd come back. We look at your current servers and storage, how the backups are configured and when a full restore was last proven, and your recovery targets against what the business needs. You come away with a findings summary and a prioritized list of gaps, which you keep whether or not the work continues with us.
    We're headquartered at 13000 Equity Place, Suite 205, Louisville, Kentucky 40223. We serve clients across the continental US. For critical infrastructure engagements, we travel where the work is.

    Not sure your backups would restore when you need them? A review will tell you.

    Tell us what your systems run on and what keeps you up at night, and you'll talk it through with an engineer who builds and recovers these systems. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is.