WDTalk

Most business owners understand the need for IT disaster recovery, in some fashion. I still see businesses, mostly Mom and Pop shops, with a single UPS securing their entire network, and if they’re really on top of disaster recovery, they may have digital tape back-up, and store those tapes off site daily.

Let’s face it. Protecting your investment in IT is a 24/7/365 commitment. It doesn’t matter if a disaster is man-made or natural – lose your data and you’ll likely lose your company.

Protecting your data
Just this weekend, my daughter called to say her friend lost her computer and Wii to a lightning strike in central Illinois, even though they were on a surge protector. This brought back memories of my first week on the job as a bench tech in the Central West End when a client brought in his NT server. It was still smokin’ from a lightning strike, and obviously dead. I think I replaced the MOBO, hard drive, memory modules and video card, and reinstalled NT. Yipes! Just last month, my credit card terminal in the Salon went up in smoke to a power interruption. Fortunately, I had a replacement in my garage, standing by.

It doesn’t matter how small or how large your business is, you really need a definitive DR plan for your company. In the Marine Corps, we wrote SOP’s, or Standard Operation Procedures and Contingency Scenarios. In business – processes, policies and procedures are the crucial elements in an effective disaster recovery plan. 0bviously, people are an important piece of the pie, but a substantial portion of any good DR plan addresses infrastructure – or the facility that provides physical protection for the technology itself.

Infrastructure (data center) disaster recovery options

Cold

• Least expensive
• No equipment
• Has electrical, environmental and telecommunications accommodations
• Offers longer recovery time, but does give the client somewhere to go in case of a disaster

Warm

• Is essentially a site that has all necessary IT equipment, ready to go live, but lacks live data
• Requires set a brief set up period

Hot

• Fully equipped site ready to go at a moment’s notice
• Normally contains continuously replicated data
• Most expensive, but ready when needed
• Essential for hospitals, financial institutions and ecommerce operations

An Important Note
Disaster recovery encompasses more than simply restoring or replicating data – it’s having people, processes and infrastructure in place to restore your business to full functionality in case of disaster.

Always couple DR with business continuity planning – how will your business continue to operate following a disaster – and what impact will it extract