The Alpharetta City Council has approved a $149,291 data backup and disaster recovery services contract that promises to avoid costly downtime and quickly recover an entire server either locally or using the vendor’s cloud-based system.

The city awarded the contract, “to provide the most robust disaster recovery solution possible,” to ThinkGard LLC, according to a staff report to the council. “This system employs image-based backups that allow the recovery of the entire server (operating system, settings, files) as opposed to traditional file-based backups,” staff said.

ThinkGard has been retained by the cities of Smyrna and Roswell, which gave “a high recommendation” for the vendor, staff said. The first year’s pricing include one-time costs of $35,651 and an annual cost of $113,639; that annual cost will continue in Year 2.