I work for a company that has purchased a software license for software that is needed to make our company run smoothly. We'd like to create a backup of the server in case of hardware failure, however the company we bought it from says that creating a copy of the software on the server is illegal and is instead asking for an insane amount of money for an additional license to create a backup on our own hardware.(Backing up the database for the program isn't an issue with them, just the software itself)
I understand that under U.S.C Title 17 ยง 117 that if we owned the software we'd be able to create a backup, however because we're just licensing it this might not apply.
In case of a hardware failure they would reinstall the software on another server and restore the database backup however this would be only doable during business hours and would take longer than us doing it ourselves.
Is it legal for them to deny us the ability to create our own backup and instead have to rely on them?