Simplifying Disaster Recovery And Cloud Storage
Some folks may think that a disaster resulting in massive data loss is mostly caused by natural disasters or wide spread power outages – that can certainly be the case as we are painfully aware here in the North East. However, it could also be caused by an internal infrastructure problem such as a software upgrade error or perhaps a major error caused by a user. In fact, software glitches or human errors are more common than a natural disaster with respect to a major data loss event. If a major data loss occurs, your business should be able to survive such a disaster and be prepared for it.
Potential Problems With Conventional File Storage and Disaster Recovery Plans
Many businesses I work with have the following file storage scenario: A number of users or clients are attached to host computers. The users’ data sits on a primary storage device and is backed up to a backup server and copied to disk or copied to tape which is then taken to a second site to prepare for a disaster recovery. Depending on your needs and budget, this backup might happen continuously or on a daily basis. In other words, a copy of your data is at a different location.
In the event of a major infrastructure failure at your primary location, all users would loose access to their data. Now you need to get access to the data at the other location which in some cases is a second data center which the customer has established. Beside the high cost of running a second data center or a backup location, you have to connect all your users to that secondary site across your WAN (wide are network) which could be cumbersome and time consuming. If your organization does not have some type of data connection to a secondary site in place, then you need to get the backup tapes yourself or have them delivered to your business location. Traditional restoration methods can take several hours or even days. The cost of not having access to that data goes up quickly. Just take the average salary and multiply it by the number of users who depend on your network infrastructure and you can quickly get a sense of how much the lost time and productivity will cost your business.
Considerations To Protect Your Data
Business Continuity: How long can you afford to be offline? Recent Gartner Group studies estimate that the cost of downtime is approximately $15,000/hour for small and mid sized businesses and over $40,000/hour for larger businesses. Is that acceptable to your business or organization?
Data Integrity: Is there a chance that the data could be corrupt or changed as you back it up to a second site? If you are backing up to tape, then a word of caution is in order, many restorations from tape are less than 100% successful. Again, a Gartner Group study demonstrates that 10-50% of all tape restores fail, and one third of businesses who back up to tape drives never test restoration from tape. Clearly, you need to be sure and test that your data restore is 100% successful as you prepare for disaster. Also consider how often you are sending the data to that second site – once a week is not often enough in today’s data driven business environment.
Cost: How much will it cost to prepare for disaster recovery? The cost of a data continuity service is typically a fraction of what it would cost to loose that data entirely.
Security: Remember, you are sending your data off-site whether it is sent via a WAN connection to a secondary location, or you are taking tapes to your home office once a week. You must ensure that your data is encrypted when it leaves the four walls of your primary data center or business location. If you have HR records, medical records, customer information, or other types of sensitive information – you could open your business to a significant liability if the data is not properly secured and encrypted. The data needs to be encrypted BEFORE it leaves your business location.
Simplicity: Some businesses set up a backup system that is so complex that it becomes brittle the moment it is tested and it fails at several different points. For examples, loading tape after tape is cumbersome when restoring data. The backup and restore process should be simple and straight forward.
Cloud Storage: Some of the providers I partner with are offering cloud storage at the back end of their data storage solutions. Specifically, all the security and encryption happens at the customer location before the data leaves the building through sophisticated storage controllers. However, businesses are using the virtually unlimited storage capability of the cloud providers to store their data. Additionally, cloud storage services offer unlimited versions of the data across multiple data centers throughout the country. In essence, this brings the cloud storage capabilities right into your data center at a significant cost reduction when compared with traditional data storage options. Cloud storage helps free up disc space at your business location while offering secure and unlimited backup. Most importantly, your data is 100% available, accessible, and secure – all backed by a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
There are affordable data continuity services which provide ease of use, 100% reliability and security, and complete system restore times of 15 minutes after a disaster, backed by a strong Service Level Agreement (SLA).
Feel free to contact me to assist your business or organization with developing a data continuity strategy.
