the account database 114 for the application server 110 specifically for each customer there is a redundancy level that is associated with the amount of redundancy that each customer has elected for example customer 1 has a redundancy level of 2 which corresponds to their image information being stored in two off site storage locations whereas customer 3 has elected to have a higher level of redundancy 3 in this case the image information for customer 3 is stored in three redundant storage locations the account database 114 also stores the encryption key utilized by each of the customers 1 4 in the preferred embodiment the image information that is stored in the peer storage of another customer is encrypted in the illustrated example the corresponding encryption keys are stored by the application server 110 although in other embodiments the encryption key is only held by the customer for that customer 39 s image information fig5 illustrates some of the information maintained in the redundancy manager 115 in the illustrated embodiment the redundancy manager 115 maintains information concerning the storage assets of each of the customers 1 4 for example in the illustrated example it maintains the device type for each of the storage assets 1 a 113 1 c for.