Replication options for corporates

It’s inevitable that all companies prepare reports and other publications at various times throughout the year. Whether they're monthly, quarterly, or annually, these reports typically require the generation of a great deal of data. At the same time, the United States has recently instituted more stringent reporting policies for public companies, and the European Union is following suit.
Loss of critical data could mean fiscal, corporate-wide, and even personal disaster if it causes missed reporting deadlines. Your organization must plan how it will recover in time from a possible disaster to meet these deadlines.
Replication or SQL server replication is a great option to ensure little or no data loss occurs during a hardware system disaster. Hardware-based solutions protect against data loss, but this protection comes at a price.

However this protection comes at a price. That price means both a higher cost than most solutions as well as a performance impact on the production systems due to the "two-phase commit" method of data protection that nearly all hardware-based replication tools use.

Software-based replication (also called host-based), exchange replication, exchange server replication is another option. At a lower cost and generally without a performance impact, these tools replicate at either the block- or byte-level using an asynchronous methodology.
If replication is too expensive, snapshot technologies are another option. Available choices include hardware-based solutions from your current vendors or software-based solutions from Microsoft and many third parties (depending on your operating system).
Snapshot technologies allow you to independently take point-in-time copies of data on a set schedule or on demand. While this method is still not as effective as replication, it allows you to rescue a much larger portion of your data after a disaster than a once-per-day tape backup alone. No matter what combination of solutions you choose, preparing to recover on a moment's notice during reporting periods is a vital part of modern business. Data loss isn't a good reason to miss reporting deadlines, and your organization could even incur stiff penalties and other repercussions for skipping reports.