Continuing on the disaster recovery theme from my i365 colleague Carine Blanchet’s recent post, “Key Considerations for Disaster Recovery Preparedness”, last week The New York Times published an educational article entitled, “A Small-Business Guide to Disaster Recovery”, which advises that every business, especially SMBs, should have a DR plan in place.

The article notes “the most common business disaster is data loss, which can result from a number of causes including human error, hardware failure, natural disaster and theft,” and states it “is easy to recover from if you have a backup solution in place.”

The article then provides advice on how SMBs can ensure they have the right backup solution in place, and makes some great points such as:

• it is important to have backups “offsite, secure and available for recovery 24/7”
• “backup is nothing without recovery”
• online backup is a popular approach to meet the above objectives “with the added benefit of (providing users with) ease of use and automation”

While the article also covers the importance of the communications and people aspect of DR planning, it is missing one crucial element − disaster recovery is not just about the data.

If data is an organization’s lifeblood then the critical servers and applications are its vital organs. These systems, such as email, transaction processing, customer database, etc, help sustain and run the business, and if they are lost in the event of a disaster then business grinds to a halt – even if all data is recoverable.

Carine also wrote in a recent BusinessComputingWorld article “Five Cost-Effective Ways To Ensure Fast, Complete Data Recovery”:

What happens if you suffer a regional or site-wide disaster? How quickly can you recover your critical systems? Unless you have made prior arrangements for a recovery site, you’re likely to suffer an extended loss of operations that could threaten your organization’s survival. Large companies typically create redundant data centers or hot sites that enable almost instantaneous recovery after a disaster. However, such solutions are costly and thus impractical for many small- to mid-sized businesses.

Fortunately for SMBs (as well as enterprises), the cloud and virtualization technology is leveling the playing field, making DR services that protect both systems and data a viable and affordable option for organizations of all sizes.

In her July 24, 2009 blog post about her report, “How The Cloud Will Transform Disaster Recovery Services,” Forrester Research analyst Stephanie Balaouras writes that cloud-based backup and virtual disaster recovery services are available now and helping businesses “address major pain points in IT.” She concludes that “every IT operations professional must now seriously consider these services when evaluating any backup or DR offering.”

So what does this all mean? It means SMBs need to not only backup and protect their data offsite but also their critical business systems as well. And if internal resources and/or expertise are limited then using a cloud-based/online service is a cost-effective approach as no capital infrastructure expenditures are required.

The New York Times article concludes that “the best preparation for any situation you may face is to have a well-thought-out plan in place.” And using an integrated system and data recovery solution should be an essential component of that plan….

Posted by John Sun

With hurricane season in full swing and Hurricanes Fred and Linda heading towards land in the Atlantic and the Pacific, now is the time to consider your preparedness for a disaster.  Can your company continue operations if your site is unavailable or under mandatory evacuation orders? Unfortunately many companies, particularly smaller to mid-sized organizations, do not have an answer to this question – and yet a disruption could be devastating to the business.

Getting started is not that difficult if you know what to look for in a solution.  The following are 5 key things to consider when evaluating and selecting a disaster recovery solution:

1)    Practice Makes Perfect. We all remember this adage from our childhood. The more you practice something, the better you get at it. Disaster recovery is the same.  To adequately prepare for a disaster means you need to run through a mock one before disaster strikes. Many organizations don’t regularly do this for a variety of reasons including lack of staff resources, time, and facilities.  Selecting a vendor that provides a DR test as part of the solution solves this dilemma. Your organization will be better prepared for a disaster, as you will have practiced recovery before disaster strikes.

2)    Documentation, Documentation, Documentation. Documenting all of the steps required to recover key systems is just as important as testing.  It provides instructions to you and your team on what steps need to be taken to recover. It also can fulfill a regulatory requirement.  Select a solution that provides you with a documented DR plan.

3)    Is Travel Required? Many organizations take the route of selecting a collocation facility for disaster recovery.  These facilities provide the rack space and power required to recover your key systems.  If you are using a traditional tape-based backup to recover you need to travel to your collocation facility to load the tapes and begin the recovery process.  In a disaster are you sure your staff can travel to a location?  Your staff may have family issues which stand in the way.  In addition to performing an actual recovery after a disaster, best practices dictate that you perform a DR test.  This means that your staff also needs to travel to do a DR test, taking away resources from day-to-day business operations in addition to travel costs.  To avoid travel, select a solution where travel is not required for a DR test or an actual recovery.

4)    Can you obtain a better RTO? Traditional DR solutions usually promise 72 or 48 hour recovery time objective (RTO).  The lengthy RTO is due to the fact that these solutions frequently rely on tape-based recoveries from a collocation site.  To recover, you need to locate the backup tapes, travel to the collocation site, and load the tapes for recovery.  If you leverage newer disk-based solutions that don’t rely on tape you can achieve better RTOs.  You no longer need to locate backup tapes; instead you simply identify your last backup.  You do not need to travel to a collocation site as recovery can be done remotely.  Finally, restoring a large amount of data from tape usually requires multiple tapes meaning they all need to be loaded to complete recovery.  With disk-based solutions you just need to identify your latest backup.  With a better RTO you get back to business sooner.

Experts can help. Effectively developing a DR strategy takes time, effort, resources and skill away from your day-to-day business.  If you outsource then you don’t need to do this; leverage experts to guide you through the planning and recovery process.  Select a DR solution that provides you with guidance so you can concentrate on your business.  i365 offers Remote Disaster Recovery Service, a hosted service (managed by DR experts) to help you quickly recover your key servers and data after a site disaster, and remotely access them in a secure virtual environment.  It is integrated with our backup solutions that allow you save your data to a secure hosted data center, and a team of DR experts will guide you through the planning and recovery process. Learn more about Disaster Recovery Solutions.

Posted by: Carine Blanchet