SMBs & Continuous Operations
Topics
For
small and mid-sized businesses, a company’s health often depends on
strong business
continuity operations. Power outages, server crashes, storage failures,
malware, and natural disasters can affect your infrastructure and
workforce,
and they continue to be real dangers. In relation to these concerns,
there are
several questions that are important to answer: For example, if
critical
operations are adversely affected, do you have a plan to maintain
access and to
remain competitive? While your company’s primary goal is to provide
24/7
availability during a disaster or after a data loss incident, what
exactly
constitutes effective data recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC)
for
your
business?
Keep in mind that a disaster affecting your company can have wide repercussions that can influence every area of your business. Moreover, you should to be prepared to effectively deal with the scale of these problems, whether simple or complex.
Keep in mind that a disaster affecting your company can have wide repercussions that can influence every area of your business. Moreover, you should to be prepared to effectively deal with the scale of these problems, whether simple or complex.
What
you
should consider is that data loss and disasters occur more often
than is
generally realized, from simple application and user-error issues to
full-blown
data center outages. For example, if your email system is disabled, the
ramifications can be widespread. The loss of critical business
processes and the
accompanying communication failure can cause impaired productivity,
missed or
delayed business transactions, and dissatisfied customers.
Sustained
DR: Challenges and
Opportunities
In terms of adopting effective DR procedures, careful planning and management support is necessary. Since DR is not primarily about the technology (it is about business value), it’s important for IT or administrators to clearly express to management what downtime means in terms of revenue loss. The key objective is to translate the technical language into business terms. Management should be made aware of how an efficient DR plan can help an organization function flawlessly and increase revenue.
Fortunately, a broad array of resources is available for data protection, archiving, and recovery. These solutions exist at every level, from low-cost backup in the form of disk and portable drives for small firms, to virtualization and cloud computing services for larger-sized firms. You should begin to undertake the process by first understanding the strategies and by formulating the goals you hope to achieve with DR.
Ultimately, the objective is to figure out which applications and data restoration services should be deployed and where they should be focused. Traditionally, DR for smaller companies has relied on approaches such as data backed up and stored on physical formats, such as tape, Blu-ray, disc, or DVD. These periodic backups are subsequently archived for long-term storage.
Then, after a minor or major disaster, restoring data to either the repaired hardware or to hardware located in an entirely new data center is a relatively straightforward process. The question you need to ask yourself is, if archived data is on-site and a local disaster, such as fire or flood occurs destroying data in the process, what will you do?
Cloud-based technologies and server virtualization has mainly been employed by large enterprises. But these solutions are gradually changing the landscape of DR for SMBs. They are making disaster recovery more affordable for smaller businesses.
In terms of adopting effective DR procedures, careful planning and management support is necessary. Since DR is not primarily about the technology (it is about business value), it’s important for IT or administrators to clearly express to management what downtime means in terms of revenue loss. The key objective is to translate the technical language into business terms. Management should be made aware of how an efficient DR plan can help an organization function flawlessly and increase revenue.
Fortunately, a broad array of resources is available for data protection, archiving, and recovery. These solutions exist at every level, from low-cost backup in the form of disk and portable drives for small firms, to virtualization and cloud computing services for larger-sized firms. You should begin to undertake the process by first understanding the strategies and by formulating the goals you hope to achieve with DR.
Ultimately, the objective is to figure out which applications and data restoration services should be deployed and where they should be focused. Traditionally, DR for smaller companies has relied on approaches such as data backed up and stored on physical formats, such as tape, Blu-ray, disc, or DVD. These periodic backups are subsequently archived for long-term storage.
Then, after a minor or major disaster, restoring data to either the repaired hardware or to hardware located in an entirely new data center is a relatively straightforward process. The question you need to ask yourself is, if archived data is on-site and a local disaster, such as fire or flood occurs destroying data in the process, what will you do?
Cloud-based technologies and server virtualization has mainly been employed by large enterprises. But these solutions are gradually changing the landscape of DR for SMBs. They are making disaster recovery more affordable for smaller businesses.
Kerry Doyle 2011 All Rights Reserved