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An Introduction to Tape Backup
If you run a small business, chances are you're saving important files to a server. But what happens when disaster strikes? How are you ensuring that your files won't be lost? Many people fail to realize that the loss of files could cripple their...
Data Recovery: Beginners Tips
Right now you probably in a lot of mental pain, and all you’re concerned about is recovering your data as quickly as possible - so we’ll refrain from comments on the wisdom of regular back ups. The time for preventative measures has gone - the...
Data Recovery for Less
If you feel as though you professional and personal lives are at stake if you lose all the data that you have stored on your computer, then it may be time to think about investing in data recovery. Believe it or not, only 2% of the billions...
Getting More Bang for the Storage Buck
In an article titled "No Waiting: Considering the Benefits of Solid State Disks," 1 authors Ramon Sandoval and Maneesha Lee highlighted the growing popularity of solid state disks (SSDs) as accelerators for enterprise databases. The authors cited...
Great Site Ranking In Google The Secret's Out
How many years did you register your domain name for? If it was only one then Google could hold that against you. Why? Because the majority of Spam websites only register a domain name for one year. A domain name registered for a longer...
How & Why GPS Offers Affordable Fleet Tracking
There are more and more companies that are turning to Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to find out where their fleet vehicles are or have been. GPS is a satellite-based navigation system that reports the location, speed and direction of...
iSCSI vs. FC for Meeting Mission Critical Requirements
Introduction
Mission
Critical Data is just what its name says: critical to the
core functioning of an enterprise. Mission critical data must be
available 24x7 and fully backed up for immediate recovery in the
event of disaster....
Protect Yourself Before Your Hard Drive Crashes
Almost everyone who has used a computer has experienced a hard drive problem at some point. Are you prepared to lose your data? If your hard drive crashes right now, do you have an action plan to follow?
Most people get complacent about...
Software That Takes Care Of ... Other Software
What's housekeeping software? It's software that takes care of your PC and everything recorded on that hard-drive. If that's what you need, make sure you consider these titles.
HandyRecovery 2.0 (SoftLogica LLC)
As you might expect, data...
SYI: Save your Identity
The warning signs can start innocently enough that you don't even recognize them as being warning signs of impending doom. Perhaps it's a letter from your credit card company about a credit application. It might be a call from your bank inquiring...
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The Mystery of the Unknown
The mystery of the unknown – by Dina Safar & Joseph Ghabi
Your Work place is no longer available, disaster has struck, and time is money! How many times have you heard these statements?
It is a nightmare for CIOs and IT directors to have to explain downtime to their CEO and CFO.
For many CEOs and CFOs, what was important yesterday is no longer valid today. Too much concentration and spending has been invested into the infrastructure of networking which opposes the reality of today, that is more concentrated upon business availability and continuity.
What would happen if your company had a small disaster that equals to big trouble? If something happens to the workplace, then how much will it cost to recover lost data? What contingency plan does your company have? And finally, how much will all of the above costs? This is not an example of psychic divination, it is a mere fact and we all experimented that after September 11th 2001.
There are different variations to business continuity, which will all depend on to which extent is acceptable for a company to have a downtime. Is it two days, one hour or perhaps not even a mere 5 minutes? Does the company need business continuity to the extent of an off-site disaster recovery?
Business continuity can be differentiated in two levels.
1-Business continuity where we secure and manage all risks, which may be brought about by technology failure. This includes human error, equipment failure, database corruption, hacking and various other external disasters.
2- Business continuity where we require an offsite backup (Disaster Recovery Site) to resume the same level of productivity in case of workplace disruption. The disaster recovery (DR) planning deals with massive site failure whether it is complete or partial. Site failure is typically the permanent consequence of broadly disruptive forces.
Threats to businesses are more obvious today, however, they have always existed and they always will prevail. The event, which occurred on September 11, changed the definition of crisis management plans since many companies had disaster recovery plans in place. However, very few had an off-site plan.
A DR plan begins with evaluating the vulnerabilities of an organization’s information technology assets. Your business may have done some work towards planning for a possible disaster but will it survive such circumstances? The next important step is to find out the effect of a disaster on your business. How much money could you lose if the IT systems are no longer available? How much money would it cost to recover your IT systems?
The third step is to develop a disaster recovery strategy that fits your requirements in terms of cost and time. After the strategy has been defined the detailed work of ‘disaster recovery’ begins by implementing the plan that will allow your business to survive any situation. Studies have shown that even the best plan will not succeed if it has not been
practiced and maintained. On a final note, a long-term program of testing and maintenance should be attempted to ensure that the plan will work at any time.
Many solutions are available and every company has a different set of needs. The main issue in choosing DR solutions is the speed of replication and recovery. In the past, 48 hours was acceptable to get backup tapes loaded, and be up-and-running again. Today, every uptime moment qualifies as mission critical. As more enterprises rely on the Internet and require immediate access to their data to function, they are less tolerant of lost uptime. Each day more companies realize the only way to minimize downtime associated with disaster is to implement an alternative data processing site that can be operational in a very short time. One of the major technical challenges in maintaining a backup data center is in keeping the data at the backup data center synchronized with the data in the primary data center. Thanks to today’s available technology, software supporting any-to-any connectivity, not only delivers lightning-fast data mirroring and replication technology that enables the creation of cutting edge backup data, but centers with no single point of failure. Also, it makes the resulting fast remote data synchronization available across vendor lines and avoids the problems of host-based replication. This software does not require any specialized hardware to replicate storage data. It can replicate data over any existing LAN, MAN, or WAN network infrastructure. The replication is configured and managed independently of application servers.
Fault-tolerant hardware is available, with zero interruption in processing, zero loss of performance and zero loss of data integrity, even if a component fails. This means that unlike a high availability cluster, these computers do not impose recovery time. Their designs include modular redundancy fault-tolerant server to protect your users and applications from component outages for an average less than five minutes of downtime annually.
Risks can be minimized but never entirely eliminated. All studies show that businesses, which have a disaster recovery plan for their vital systems, have a substantially higher likelihood of surviving when loss occurs.
No one knows when a disaster will strike. It may never happen, or it may happen today. It is only for that of which ‘might happen’. The mystery of the unknown! Being ready and prepared ahead of time can mark the fine line between staying in business or going out of business.
Dina Safar
Director of Marketing
Protection Infoglobale Inc.
Joseph Ghabi
Director of Business Development
Protection Infoglobale Inc.
jghabi@protectioninfo.com
http://www.protectioninfo.com
About the Author
Joseph Ghabi is the Director of Business Development at
Protection Infoglobale Inc. Protection Infoglobale is a system
integrator specializes in Business Continuity and Disaster
Recovery.
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