Entries categorized under “Business Continuity”

One of the principle struggles within organizations in the first decade of the new millennium has been solving Windows backup issues. Now that a new decade has arrived the problem has changed as organizations turn their attention to how they can recover their Windows application servers in a time frame and manner that meets their requirements. But to identify such a solution they first need to define what such a recovery solution should look like. (read more)

This week I am spending a couple of days at Compellent's annual C-Drive conference in Minneapolis, MN where about 500 users, value added resellers (VARs) and Compellent sales reps are in attendance. Since a couple of years have passed since I attended the last one, I thought I would make the 6-hour drive from Omaha to Minneapolis to catch up on the latest going-ons with Compellent and gain some insight as to how they plan to recoup after their latest earnings stumble. (read more)

The introduction of disk and deduplication into the backup process over the last few years has certainly helped to minimize existing backup problems. Organizations using these technologies have found that their backup success rates now approach 100% and that they no longer have to continually troubleshoot backup problems. But while these technologies may fix existing backup problems, they relegate disk to a glorified form of tape and do not serve to fundamentally transform the recovery process. (read more)

Numerous surveys show that the adoption of server virtualization is poised to take off in small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). But what can get overlooked in this trend is that greater than 70% of these virtual server deployments that occur in SMB environments will use external storage. This is where SMBs can run into problems. Identifying an affordable, scalable external storage system that can meet their short and long term needs is sometimes easier said than done but that is exactly what the newly announced SnapServer SAN S2000 is designed to deliver. (read more)

Even though Gartner Research says that server virtualization is not yet widely implemented (only 16 percent of workloads currently run on virtual machines according to Gartner), Gartner does point to a more virtualized environment in the very near future. It expects that fully 50% of workloads will run inside virtual machines by 2012 and represent nearly 58 million deployed machines. But as this transition from physical to virtual occurs within data centers, traditional disaster recovery (DR) software, procedures and techniques are not positioned to migrate so cleanly into this newly virtualized environment. (read more)

The new relationship that Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) struck with InMage Systems to use InMage about three months ago had a number of immediate ramifications. It provided HDS with a new heterogeneous replication option that it could use across its own storage systems; it made HDS more competitive in customer accounts where it did not traditionally have a foothold and it provided an entrée for HDS into next generation data protection technologies for disaster recovery. (read more)

"Business Continuity" and "Disaster Recovery" are two aspects of IT and business planning and process management that no organization can afford to get wrong. So it is somewhat disconcerting that a recent article reports that the majority of businesses do not yet have a disaster recovery plan or business continuity process in place or, if they do, they do not regularly test it. (read more)

"Disaster recovery (DR) may not be hot among our executive management team but they have definitely turned up the heat around DR." That statement, from a storage administrator at a university in the Pittsburgh area, is reflective of the new view that executives in all sizes of organizations are adopting right now in regards to disaster recovery. As the economy continues to slow and management has more time to focus on internal processes that need fixing, organizations are seeing definite gaps in their ability to protect and recover applications, which new solutions like Overland Storage's REO Business Continuity Appliance (BCA) can help resolve. (read more)

There were a lot of interesting statistics that came out of the just released June 2009 study that was done by Applied Research on behalf of Symantec Corporation. However the one stat that caught my attention was the increasing involvement that upper management is taking in disaster recovery within enterprise organizations. Executives in North America increased their participation on DR committees by almost 50% in the last year (67% in 2009 versus 46% a year ago) while globally executives more than doubled their participation on these DR committees from 33% in 2008 to 70% in 2009. (read more)

Most organizations recognize that the introduction of disk into the data protection process is fundamentally changing the landscape of how data is protected. But what organizations are failing to entirely grasp is how disk fundamentally alters how applications can be protected and recovered. Disk can minimize the impact of data protection on production applications while providing shorter recovery times and improving recovery reliability. It is as organizations come to this realization that they also begin to grasp how recovery can displace backup as the next IT headache. (read more)

Attempting to make your entire SAP environment highly available can be a gargantuan challenge, especially considering the number of moving parts contained within an SAP landscape. Most of the time when one looks to ensure that any application is protected and made highly available, it's common practice to ask the application vendor for a set of best practices and guidelines to do so. However, SAP's typical response is, "Work with our partners and/or 3rd party consultants to help you achieve the level of availability you are looking for." (read more)

Bounce the phrase "consolidated recovery" off of most individuals in IT and you are just as likely to get a blank stare as a good answer as to what it means or how to accomplish it. Most IT staff keeps so busy on a day to day basis just managing their assortment of backup, clustering and replication products that they never get much beyond focusing on the protection and recovery of each application. So for them to contemplate the consolidation of protection and recovery using just one methodology has more than likely not even crossed their minds. (read more)

Determining a solid foundation for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans are a significant challenge for enterprises of all sizes and shapes. Understanding the business value of your organization's data is the first step to achieving that solid foundation as it provides a framework for what's critical and what's not so critical to the operation of your organization. (read more)

Synchronous replication is a technology that organizations often view as synonymous with the highest levels of application availability. In fact, a SearchStorage article entitled WAN Mirroring and Replication written a little over a year ago even makes the assertion that organizations using synchronous replication can achieve recovery point objectives (RPOs) that remain near zero with recovery time objectives (RTOs) typically on the order of minutes. But is this assertion about synchronous replication really true and under what circumstances? And is it possible that asynchronous replication can actually deliver better RPOs and RTOs over a WAN for disaster recovery (DR) than synchronous replication? (read more)

Whether taking on a new plan, or retrofitting an existing Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity plan, it's extremely helpful to have a strict set of goals on how to accomplish, not only the DR when an actual incident occurs, but also to ensure that an appropriate test matrix is in place and utilized. Surprisingly the organizations I visit all seem very dedicated to DR and Business Continuity. (read more)

Replication software is increasingly entering the conversation as the logical replacement for backup software in client environments. Yet replicating data is really the easy part. Integrating the replication software so it becomes part of the fabric of a company's infrastructure is a far more difficult task. It is also one of the reasons that replication software has, to date, made so little headway in terms of displacing backup software for enterprise wide data protection. But as replication software matures, that will change. (read more)

In a previous blog, Dr. James Tu, the Information Security Officer at a real estate services company, discussed how he had sought out an affordable and workable enterprise-wide disaster recovery solution from an uneven landscape of replication products and found one that met his needs right under his nose. By turning on a feature in InMage Systems' Profiler which he had previously obtained to measure data change rates on his application servers, he converted it into InMage Systems' fully functioning replication software, Scout. But now he still had to assess how well Scout would fit into his existing infrastructure and then build the business case to justify it. (read more)

The road to recovery is a journey that more organizations are embarking upon as they start to look beyond just successfully backing up their data and instead focus on cost-effectively recovering their business. Yet as organizations begin this journey, they find that that the road to recovery is strewn with obstacles and is neither well-traveled nor well-marked. This was the dilemma that recently confronted Dr. James Tu, the Information Security Officer at a real estate services company, who was seeking to carve out an affordable and workable enterprise-wide disaster recovery solution from an uneven landscape of replication products. (read more)

A little over two years ago, an article appeared on the Smart Computing website that provided some tips for how to select the appropriate backup software for your PC. Of the tips it suggested, one of the more interesting was its recommendation to select backup software that stored data in a native format. Storing data in its native format eliminates the need to use backup software to recover it since any computer can access and recover the data. But this article was written for PCs. So the question that companies now need to ask is, "What do they need to consider before selecting a product that will allow them to store replicated data of its enterprise production servers in its native format?" (read more)

One of the more critical pieces of information that organizations need as they put together a disaster recovery plan is how much data they have in their environment and how quickly it is changing. The reason this information is so important is that without it, organizations often have no way to effectively size how much or what type of capacity they need to protect and recover their production data. In fact, I was astonished at how little information this was available about this topic or the fact that there were so few good articles on the subject. (read more)

Most businesses small and large have many IT needs but one that they continue to focus on as they move into a completely paperless world is data protection and, more specifically, data recovery. They know their current in-house backup and recovery processes are often less than adequate so when they ask hard questions like, "How long can I afford to be without my data?" and "What does losing that data mean to the company and the company's public reputation?", they don't like the answers. But what IT managers are surprised to learn as they look to move to a SaaS offering based on a cloud-based computing architecture for their backup and recovery services, they find there are many options from which to choose. (read more)

There is an abundance of negativity in the market place right now but most companies are still planning to keep their doors open in 2009 and beyond which means they still plan to spend money, albeit more frugally than before. Granted, companies are taking a hard look at every line item in the budget and cutting the fat but that is not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, companies are using this as a time to introduce new technologies to solve long standing business problems and one issue that appears high on their priority list for 2009 is recovery software. (read more)

However as the number of MSPs proliferate, the decision about which MSP to dial up gets harder, not easier, since more and more VARs are jumping on the SaaS bandwagon to offer Managed Backup Services. Further, companies need to quantify their own needs and expectations as they select an MSP. Below are some examples of questions that they need to ask and answer internally and externally before making this important decision. (read more)

Being the last calendar day of 2008, I thought it only appropriate to take a moment and look back at the most viewed blog entries on the DCIG website for the past year. While some were topics that I expected to receive a lot of attention when the blog was posted, others were blog topics that essentially came out of nowhere to garner a large number of page views. To be honest, I never thought that entries on topics like cable management and cable labeling would resonate with readers but ended up capturing a couple of the top spots for 2008. Meanwhile topics like the FTC's Red Flag Rules were so popular on DCIG's web site that it led me to write columns that eventually were picked up by websites like Network World and BusinessWeek. (read more)

"We're all doomed!" That phrase appeared in a recent Computerworld headline and encapsulates the feelings that some individuals are having during this current economic crisis. While the headline goes on to conclude that the end of the world is probably not at hand, the text of the article explains that many companies are experiencing financial troubles and need to shift gears in terms of how they act during this economic downturn. Among the actions that the author recommends a company should pursue is taking the time to evaluate every supplier and only pursue those that deliver results for the company. But what are the benchmarks by which companies should measure these results and how are these results measured when it comes to technology? (read more)