Companies of all sizes are re-examining their disaster recovery plans for disaster preparedness.
The consequences of losing data are quite serious. Currently, more and more companies record information electronically. Companies are increasingly reliant on these records and on the tools used to process and store the data. People never print emails, transactions, and most electronic records. Once an electronic record is lost, it is impossible to recreate it. And most companies don't allow data to be lost.
Currently, companies are required to comply with regulatory requirements to retain and access electronic information even in the face of disaster. Therefore, companies must adopt certain technologies and policies to ensure that data is stored securely and available at any time; at the same time, the company must also ensure that data can be restored in a timely manner after a disaster occurs. Implementing a disaster recovery strategy begins with proper planning and design.
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The disaster recovery plan must include the following three points:
Backup data must be protected. For example, setting up a backup tape in a local tape drive to store data is not practical if the entire data center catches fire. You need to set up a separate backup copy in another location.
Must be able to restore operations through backup. If a site is washed away by a flood, a protected site must have enough data to allow the company to continue operating normally. For most companies, data does not represent the entire company, but it supports the operation of the entire company.
The recovery process must run correctly within the time frame described by the company's needs. There's no point in simply implementing a remote backup if you can't get your company running again - or if it takes weeks to repair the tape data.
Once you understand the importance of these points to your company's recovery needs, you can begin to develop a disaster recovery strategy. Strategy and Company Needs
There are many ways to develop a disaster recovery strategy (sometimes called a business continuity plan or BCP), and there is more than one right way to protect your company's operations. Strategies and procedures developed by one company may not work for another. However, there are some common ways to implement a disaster recovery plan.
Offsite tape backup is the most traditional method, that is, data is backed up regularly in a data center or remote office. The backup tapes are then copied and moved to a secure site, where Iron Mountain's network management product works. Tapes can be recalled periodically based on the cycle, or when recovery is required. In recent years, backup processes have begun to use optical media such as DVDs. Optical media generally costs more than magnetic tape, but offers better performance and greater reliability. However, due to limited capacity, people are slowly no longer interested in optical media.
Remote disk replication is becoming increasingly popular, where resources in a data center are regularly replicated to identical storage resources at a remote site. The bank may replicate EMC Centera content to Centera at a remote site over a WAN link. In this way, you have twice the resources, the recovery speed is faster than tape, and if implemented properly, you can also take over the primary storage site if the primary site fails.
When developing a disaster plan/strategy, there are often cost considerations. The format is similar to insurance: you're paying to avoid a larger financial loss. Data protection models are complex, have costs, and you're trying to mitigate potential losses, and the ultimate goal is to reconcile the two. So, a small medical company needs weekly off-site tape backups because it may not be able to afford more expensive recovery needs; a 24/7 global Internet provider needs to replicate a data center because the cost of downtime is much higher than disaster recovery The cost of strategy. Keep in mind the third requisite above: recovery must be completed within a time frame that is consistent with the company's recovery needs or ROI. To capture large amounts of data within tight recovery time objectives (RTO), a recovery strategy must be carefully crafted.
Tools and Products The data protection solution you choose should reflect your recovery strategy and should be based on your company's recovery needs. If you choose tape as your backup and recovery media, you can choose backup/recovery software that is compatible with the tape drive platform.
These products can typically be found in large data centers such as Symantec (Veritas) NetBackup, EMC NetWorker, and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.
Many disaster recovery strategies require replication between storage arrays, which can be accomplished by software provided by the array manufacturer. EMC's Symmetrix remote data appliance replicates data between Symmetrix systems. IBM uses point-to-point remote replicas to replicate between IBM arrays. Hitachi Data Systems uses TrueCopy to replicate between HDS arrays. However, you don't have to use hardware-based replication software. Companies such as FalconStor Software, NSI Software, and Kashya (now part of EMC) offer tools that can replicate between different storage arrays.
If a company lacks the resources to manage a disaster recovery site, it can outsource disaster recovery tasks to a third-party service provider for a monthly fee. Such disaster recovery vendors include E-Vault, IBM Global Services and EMC, which recently acquired Mozy (Berkeley Data Systems).
Disaster recovery strategies are not a one-size-fits-all solution. It makes sense to implement a layered disaster recovery strategy so that tape backup, disk backup, and data replication can be used in conjunction. Not all business processes are equally important to a company's survival, so the systems and data supported by different processes have different recovery priorities.
Documentation Disaster means crisis. In this crisis, you have no time to find various tapes and no time to plan how to rebuild the backup environment. Disaster recovery experts stress the importance of having comprehensive, up-to-date documentation. These documents should include: instructions for system preparation, recovery procedures, and post-recovery testing/validation of the data center before normal operations are restored. Documentation should also include contact information (such as administrator phone number, service department contact information, etc.) or access passwords. Documentation should be part of the disaster recovery plan. There should be multiple copies of the recovery plan, and each copy should be kept by full-time IT personnel or management personnel. Please note: Strictly control the version of the recovery plan so that assurance personnel can only obtain the latest version.