Business continuity and disaster recovery
Business Continuity (BC) refers to the ability of an organization to maintain products and/or services and continue operations following some type of disruptive event. A Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery Plan for organizations outlines contingencies to support every function of their operations, including staff management, mail services, shipping and receiving and telephone services.
Undoubtedly, the largest component of any Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery Plan will be Technology.
Business continuity scenarios related to technology:
When it comes to technology, disruptive events can lead to one of three scenarios: a loss of data either by theft, malfunction, destruction or system failure, a hardware failure, such as a server or storage device failure or malfunction, or a disaster that leads to a loss of facility, loss of access to a facility or weather.
When building your Business Continuity Plan, it’s important to consider and include the following:
A backup solution
Typically, backup solutions occur at the end of a day and sometimes can only be completed when users are not in the system. Also incidents that require data recovery often occur after some data has changed, which results in a loss of data.
This means that, in a scenario where nightly backups are scheduled and occurring, if a disaster occurs which resulting in the loss of the entire site prior to the media going offsite, the restoration of the data will only be available to the previous night’s backup that went off site and can result in loss of data for two days.
Traditional backup solutions can also have challenges backing up ALL type of data. Most backup plans only backup critical data and do not backup system (Operating System) software to be able to restore an entire server as opposed to reinstalling and configuring from scratch.
Some backup solutions include the ability to replicate the backup data to an offsite location, however the client is either responsible for installing and maintaining the alternate location or must procure the offsite storage location from expensive Data Centre Providers.
Recovery of physical hardware.
Business continuity plans often neglect to account for what to do in the event of the loss of a single server or multiple servers (i.e. arrangements with service providers for supply and/or deployment which cost money to maintain these arrangements)
The failure of even a single server that supports the organization’s line-of-business application can have as much impact as losing the site altogether. Even being able to temporarily access the services of the failed server for limited capacity of users can reduce the business impact from minimal to none at all.
In Disaster Recovery scenarios where the main technology site is lost or made unavailable for an extended duration of time, there are often large costs and detailed complex steps to either recover the entire site or make it available at an alternate site…rarely do Disaster Recover Plans detail everything required.
Some organizations attempt to create and maintain their own offsite storage location within their own facilities, however, they are responsible for maintaining and upgrading the hardware and is often prohibitively expensive.
A welcome solution
Datto can help ease the many headaches that occur when a disruptive event occurs, ensuring that your business is not disrupted or does not suffer a loss.
Datto solution provides the following:
Backup
- Backup includes ALL data
- Increased Recovery Points (even backups hourly)
- Backups to not interrupt access to data (no need to advise users they cannot use the system after a certain time at night)
- Backups are automatically synchronized offsite and a Canadian Data Centre
- Local retention is maintained to quickly recover small or large amounts of data
- Monitoring and to provide alerts to any possibility of failed backups or potential
Hardware recovery
- Fast and easy recovery of data/files from more frequent recovery points (no retrieving multiple tapes to insert and search for a file)
- In the event a server fails, the server can be operational temporarily on the Datto appliance while the actual hardware is being replaced.
- In the event of a disaster which requires replacement of the entire site’s technology, the entire environment can be