Business continuity and disaster recovery should be a top priority for most organizations. Regardless of how much money your company has spent to purchase top of the line servers and other IT equipment to keep your business running, it can all go down in a fraction of a second. Whether it is caused by normal wear and tear on your servers, a bad power supply, a spilled cup of coffee, a spark, a fire, or even a natural disaster like hurricane or earthquake, your business needs to be prepared for a technology failure. How can your business be prepared and recover if something like this happens? Are you ready for a technology disaster?
While these events can happen when you least expect them, implementing a disaster recovery solution to mitigate the loss of data and productivity can help you maintain business continuity. Many companies have created checklists to help people know if they are fully prepared for a disaster. Check out this list to see if you are fully prepared!
What is Disaster Recovery?
Disaster recovery is being prepared for an unexpected loss of data due to server crashes, physical disasters, cybercrime, etc. The two challenges with disaster recovery are; how fast can you can recover your data and how much data will you lose? To track how well your organization can overcome these challenges, you’ll want to keep two metrics in mind: Recovery point objective (RPO) represents how much data you could lose. And Recovery time objective (RTO) is your desired timeframe to be up and running after disruption of business continuity.
In order to reach your ideal RTO and RPO, keep the following three considerations in mind when seeking a disaster recovery solution:
- Your IT Environment
- Method of Recovery
- Ease of Use
What’s The Best Solution for My Environment?
Today, there is more data and more critical applications, located in more places, than you can count on both hands (and feet too). Plus, the move towards the digital business and the need for more digital services and products means that the number of data and applications will continue to grow exponentially.
To meet these demands, organizations are transforming their IT environments. Some organizations choose to embrace a fully virtualized infrastructure, while more and more are transitioning to a hybrid IT environment that comprises elements of virtual, physical and cloud infrastructure.
When you’re searching for the right disaster recovery solution for your organization, take into account your IT environment. Some may work better with a virtualized infrastructure, but others might be ideal for a hybrid environment.
Method of Recovery
Historically, disaster recovery has been covered by two methods, tape backup and system mirroring.
Tape Backup for Disaster Recovery
Tape Backup is the practice of periodically copying data from a primary storage device to a tape cartridge so the data can be recovered if there is a hard disk crash or failure. This process is a less expensive option but has a higher RTO and RPO. You would be losing closer to a day’s worth of data when using tape Tape is also more complex to use when recovering your data, which increases the time it takes to get back up and running.
System Mirroring for Disaster Recovery
System Mirroring is the replication of logical disk volumes onto separate physical hard disks in real time to ensure continuous availability. With real-time replication, your RTO and RPO are significantly smaller than using tape. You lose almost no data when using mirroring, and recovery is simpler and thus quicker. The downside is the cost. System mirroring comes at a much higher price than using tape.
Virtualization and Hardware Appliances
What about the middle ground? Can you achieve reasonable RPO and RTO affordably? Some disaster recovery solutions use software virtualization technology, hardware appliances, or both to replicate and rapidly recover workloads in hours instead of days—and are much more affordable than mirroring.
Ease of Use
If a service interruption or disaster impacts your organization, the last thing you want is a complex solution that’s difficult to use. Because budgets are shrinking, there are less disaster subject matter experts available to recover your data, systems, and applications in the event of a catastrophe.
You’ll also want to avoid point disaster recovery solutions that don’t integrate well with your environment. Look for a single solution that recovers whole server workloads, including data, applications, middleware, and operating systems.
Finally, solutions that are lower risk and are easy to install and maintain enable IT operations to focus on delivering new opportunity-producing digital services and products.
What Solution Is Best for You
When it comes to business continuity and disaster recovery, you need confidence without complexity or cost. Visit Micro Focus to learn how you can prepare for natural disasters or other service interruptions with solutions that protect servers, both physical and virtual, and recover servers in minutes, not hours.
Race Acheson & Reed Williams
