Few companies would argue about the value of a comprehensive Disaster Recovery plan that covers all areas of the business and holds the key to successfully resuming day to day business activity should the worst happen.

Most businesses would be pretty unlucky to suffer from major downtime due to things like fire, flood or theft. Terrorism generates a huge amount of column inches and the effects of something like 911 are truly devastating however even in the current climate these occurrences are thankfully few and for between.

What is more likely to happen is an email server failure, a corrupt database or the network being compromised by a virus. Guarding against this type of outage should be the bare minimum a company should cater for, even though most of us could cope for a few hours without email, for some businesses this would lead to a huge loss in revenue.

If a server failed completely, most IT Departments wouldn’t promise delivery of the service back up and running normally in anything less that a day because this would mean relying on tape backups to rebuild the data held by the server. Commonly accepted logic is that tape isn’t all that reliable (a side issue is that most companies don’t perform regular tape restores, so don’t know how good the data on the tape is – even if they can get is back).

If a company can ‘get by’ for a couple of days without the server in place then this tells us how critical to the business this particular server or application is. For these servers using tape isn’t probably too much of a problem, but for other more mission critical application, hanging around while the hardware is rebuilt is unlikely to have the FD jumping with joy.

For critical applications think about some ‘on-site’ data replication. What this means in simple terms is that the data on Server A is replicated real time to Server B. Should server A fail, it’s a simple matter to failover to Server B, normally within a couple of minutes. Because the data has been replicated up to point of failure the users won’t lose lots of data and the system will be up and running much quicker.

Of course, this provides local high availability which although gives protection against server failure it doesn’t provide any real Disaster Recovery, if the office burns to the ground, the data will be lost. However, having invested in this local high availability solution it’s a relatively simple process to replicate the data off-site as well and deliver a true local and remote high availability and Disaster Recovery solution.

Disaster Recovery can be seen as an expensive luxury but it really depends on how you view it and more importantly how you implement it. In the current economic climate you can probably think of lots of other things to spend your limited budget on, however can you really afford for your main business systems to be off line? The good news is that you identify the key processes that make up your business and the IT platforms that support it, you have your starting point and like all things, it doesn’t have to cost the earth.

One last thought for those who see Disaster Recovery a bit like insurance, do any of you regard house insurance as unnecessary?

Andy Roberts (andy.roberts@networkutilities.co.uk) is an IT Consultant and Practitioner with over 10 years experience helping clients with Disaster Recovery and Data Replication.

Read the original article in context at http://www.networkutilities.co.uk/double-take-software/articles

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andy_Peter_Roberts

Planning, creating, and building a data centre can be one of the most expensive tasks an IT director can face. In order to maximize cost effectiveness and achieve optimum performance, reliability is key.

Data centre size can range from one room in an office to an entire building, but there are some basic requirements which must be implemented to ensure system reliability. When designing a data centre, efficient planning is very important. A number of areas must be addressed to ensure a dependable and efficient system which is capable of continued operation.

Understand the potential causes of failure

There are a number of areas cited as the most common causes of data centre failure:

• Environmental problems
• Software failure – for example, memory leaks
• Hardware failure – such as storage or processing problems
• Operator or procedural error
• Poor network reliability
• Security breaches – for example hacker attack

Environmental considerations

When planning a data centre, there are a number of physical and architectural design features which must be implemented to ensure reliability:

• Adequate Air Supply: temperature must be maintained between 20 and 25 ºC and humidity between 40 and 60 %. Too much humidity can cause water to condense on internal components. However if the air is too dry, this can cause static electricity to discharge. Malfunction is likely if the above ranges are not maintained. This is one of the prime causes of data centre malfunction. Implementation of adequate air conditioning and correct architectural design to allow for air circulation between units is vital. Particular care needs to be taken to prevent “hotspots” from occurring.

• Safeguard against power loss: external environmental factors such as hurricane or snowstorm can cause power black outs. It is vital to have a generator to ensure continued function, as well as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for emergency power. These should be of sufficient size to power cooling systems.

• Fire protection systems: the simplest forms of fire protection are smoke detectors, for early detection of a fire. It is also vital to ensure fire containment to prevent the spread of a fire to the entire data centre. For example: Contained sprinkler systems or gaseous fire suppression.

Software, hardware or network failure

Tested and quality assured hardware and software from reputable brands can help increase reliability. Common malfunction in one component, such as an internal fan or storage disc, can quickly lead to failure in another. Ensuring network performance and reliability can also have a huge impact on the performance of the data system.

Operational procedures

It is impossible to completely rule out human error and operational issues. However, devising an operations procedure to not only maximize performance but also track reliability and malfunction is key. Conduct regular back-ups on each production server to ensure quick file repair in the event of damage. Provide adequate operator training to implement protocol and avoid the most basic of errors such as leaving discs in drives, which would prevent an auto-reboot in the event of system failure.

Data security

Particularly important in large data centres with sensitive information, is to ensure adequate physical security. Corporations may consider outsourcing their data centre to an off-site location with 24 hour security guards and video surveillance. System security also requires keeping up-to-date with the latest security and anti-virus software.

Avoid single point of failure

One final key consideration is to avoid having a single point of failure. Test the system before it goes operational and ensure that if one component fails there is sufficient backup to ensure the data centre can still function. Back-up will make sure that your important data is never lost.

Our company is SAS 70 certified… the highest standards for measuring and improving data centre operations and management. Providing clients with solutions for business continuity services, managed hosting, managed security and disaster recovery for organizational security.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amy_Nutt

In particular, the Auditor General said that the security policy doesn’t include a disaster recovery plan.

Even if you work in a company you can expect that auditors are going to look for a disaster recovery policy and disaster recovery plan in your corporate security policy.