Disaster Recovery – The Basics

More and more I see companies who are backing up their data in quality ways, using a combination of good equipment, strong processes, and industry recommended best-practices.  Make no mistake – I’m happy about this.  But I’m also seeing many of these same companies who are considering their backup to be their disaster recovery plan.  Unfortunately, no data backup, no matter how good, is a disaster recovery plan.  Now, I’m not trying to preach about disaster recovery…well, okay, that’s a lie.  I’m planning on doing a little preaching.  But truly, there is a difference between a disaster recovery plan and standard data backup plan.  Ultimately, disaster recovery is the means to an end with the “end” being business continuity.  And everyone likes business continuity, right?  So whether you decide to put together a full-blown disaster recovery plan or just stay with your current data backup, knowing the difference can save your business lots of money.  Okay, I’m done preaching.  Here’s some valuable information about what makes up a good disaster recovery plan, and how to put one together…

Note:  A true disaster recovery plan includes phones, facilities, data, and more.  I’m just focusing on the data portion of things in this article.

Generally, “disasters” come in three flavors:

• Hardware failure (bad hard drive, motherboard, network card, etc.)
• Software failure (“bluescreen” is a familiar term for a reason)
• Physical failure (flood, fire, etc.)

So let’s keep things simple.  Good disaster recovery generally includes a mix of the following components:

• Quality data backup (preferably onsite and offsite)
• Imaging
• Redundancy

Let’s explore each of these in a bit more detail.

Data backup:

• Onsite – use a hard drive backup system (preferably a quality internal/external chassis that has removable drives).  In terms of reliability, ability to restore quickly, and length of service, hard drives are simply better than comparable tape systems.
• Offsite – Offsite backup solves a number of security & operational concerns, and is very cost effective these days (about $1 per GB per month is pretty common).  Because it’s automated, you don’t need to worry about people remembering to take data offsite and you can control the amount of data that is backed up offsite.

Imaging:  Imaging is the process of taking a “snapshot” of an operating system.  When applied to server systems, the use of imaging can literally save tens of thousands of dollars in recovery costs.  Imaging fails when it comes to restoring data granularly (a single e-mail, a single document, etc.), but for true disaster recovery, imaging can’t be beat.

Redundancy:  Creating a network devoid of “single points of failure” is almost always too expensive to employ, but the concept can be used effectively to significantly reduce the chance and effect “failure” can have on your business.  Some good uses of redundancy would be:

• Quality server design (multiple hard drives, fans, power supplies, etc.)
• Use of a quality SAN (Storage Area Network) in a virtualized server environment (VMware software is great in these environments)
• Server redundancy (two servers deployed in a fully redundant architecture).  Stratus Avance is amazing software that accomplishes this at a price small and medium sized businesses can absorb easily.
• Network switches deployed in a balanced architecture with enough capacity to assume full connectivity should one fail.

The last piece of a good disaster recovery plan is the plan itself.  Now that you have all these quality pieces in place, you still need to have a plan in place should a disaster strike.  Here are a few good ways to start putting your plan together:

1. Know your operational costs (by the day, by the hour, etc.).  Granted, this is only half the equation (operational costs don’t include the impact downtime will have on your clients, nor does it include other opportunity costs you may have), but it is an absolutely necessary ingredient for creating your plan.
2. Define your tolerance for downtime.  Some businesses can handle a day or two of downtime.  Others can’t afford an hour of downtime.  Determining how your tolerance for downtime will go a long way in putting your disaster recovery plan together
3. Define a budget.  If you know your operational costs are $25,000 per day (for instance), you then have good information from which you can create an appropriate budget for avoiding downtime.
4. Design your network appropriately (data backup, imaging, redundancy, etc.).
5. Put it on paper.  Just like everything else in business, putting it on paper helps make it happen.

ITP Establishes Partnership with Stratus Technologies

MILWAUKEE, Wis., January 1, 2011 – Information Technology Professionals (ITP), a computer services consultancy serving the IT needs of the greater Milwaukee and Madison community, announced today the addition of software and services expressly designed to protect clients’ most important applications against downtime and data loss. ITP is now a channel partner of Stratus Technologies, a global leader of hardware, software and services that ensure the highest levels of uptime to critical applications.

 “Reliable computer operations is critical to the success of nearly every small and medium businesses today, but typically difficult and costly to achieve” said Joe Ulm, President of Information Technology Professionals. “Guaranteeing 99.999% network uptime, complete with an enterprise-level disaster recovery solution, all for a price that’s affordable to small and medium-sized businesses is unheard of today. The ability to provide that will fundamentally change the way small and medium sized businesses deploy and manage their technology.  ITP is proud to be the only firm in the Madison and Milwaukee markets capable of delivering this revolutionary technology to its clients.”

Stratus offers software and hardware approaches to availability, both with extensive built-in technology for service and system management to protect against downtime – planned and unplanned – and data loss. The Stratus Avance software now offered by ITP provides simple, affordable high availability to ordinary Intel-based servers. The Stratus ftServer system is a single server that delivers the industry’s highest levels of uptime. Both Avance and ftServer products support Windows and Linux applications, as well as virtualization technology.

“ITP has developed an excellent reputation for technical knowledge and quality of service, and we are pleased to be affiliated with the team,” said Eric Dougherty, Stratus vice president, channel sales. “ITP’s clients can now have essentially the same availability technology developed over three decades that many of the world’s largest financial institutions and manufacturing companies use to protect their critical systems from downtime. We expect this will be a very successful partnership for both companies.”

About  Stratus Technologies

Stratus Technologies delivers uptime for the applications its customers depend on most for their success. With its ultra-reliable servers, software and services, Stratus helps to save lives and to protect the business  and reputations of companies, institutions, and governments the world over. To learn more about worry-free computing, visit www.stratus.com.

What’s New At ITP….

What’s new at ITP

The new year brings us new challenges, new opportunities, and of course, new technologies for us all to review and consider.  For many businesses this constant expansion of technology is both a blessing and a curse.  Technology can be a great tool in fostering greater efficiency, productivity, and competitive advantage for businesses, but it can also be incredibly time consuming to navigate through, deploy, and maintain.  As strange as it may sound, it’s no different here at ITP.  Certain technologies like Microsoft are staples within the business world, but most others require rigorous investigation and testing before we can recommend them to our customers.  As 2011 begins, ITP has added to our portfolio one of the most exciting technologies we’ve come across. 

ITP is proud to announce its partnership (link to press release) with Stratus Technologies.  Stratus Technologies’ Avance  product guarantees 99.999% network availability.  Yep, that’s 99.999%.  With today’s need for businesses to be instantly responsive and “always available” to customers, this is great news for small and medium-sized businesses.  See more about our partnership here www.itprosusa.com.

Virtualization. Simplified.

There’s no doubt that virtualization is becoming more and more prevalent for small businesses of all sizes.  There are lots of reasons for this including:

• Reduced downtime
• Increased performance
• Strong disaster recovery
• Scalability
• Excellent business flexibility

But I find it curious that many companies I meet with are initially confused by the concept.  So…here’s my attempt to simplify virtualization.

At its most basic level, virtualization for small businesses generally involves running multiple server operating systems on one physical server.  That’s it.  Oh sure, more than one physical server can be deployed to create better redundancy, less downtime, etc.  But just knowing that simple concept – multiple server systems running on a single piece of hardware (server) – puts you way ahead of many small businesses.