DISASTER RECOVERY ebook FACING DISASTERS HEAD ON

Transcription

1 DISASTER RECOVERY ebook FACING DISASTERS HEAD ON CHAPTER 1: Facing Reality CHAPTER 2: Disaster Recovery Considerations CHAPTER 3: Making the Best Choices CHAPTER 4: A Single, Unified Solution CHAPTER 5: A Powerful Partnership

2 Affordably reduce or eliminate downtime and keep your organization running smoothly, even in the event of a disaster. LEARN HOW

3 1:FACING REALITY The fact is disasters happen. And when systems go down, losses add up. The inability to rapidly recover data can lead to revenue losses, damaged reputations and sullied brands as well as fees and critical mission failures. IT has to be prepared to face disasters that disable primary and back-up data centers and sites, or that make data inaccessible to key personnel. That s why organizations of all sizes are focusing their attention on how to protect mission-critical information and applications from disasters and unplanned outages. Thankfully, there are readily available and affordable solutions to address data protection, loss and disaster recovery. Read on to learn about the latest industry trends and best practices for keeping your data and applications secure and available during planned and unplanned outages.

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5 2: Disaster Recovery Considerations While most of us think of natural disasters like hurricanes and man-made disasters, such as 9/11, the most frequent impacts to IT availability are actually software failures and planned downtime. But while disasters may represent only a fraction of the environmental issues that compromise productivity, it s the responsibility of every organization to ensure essential functions can continue uninterrupted and that technology infrastructure is always available and optimized to meet mission-critical goals. Ensuring disaster recovery via a comprehensive and effective continuity planning for all circumstances is not only a good idea it s a requirement for all Federal agencies in the United States. All Federal agencies must have a viable COOP (Continuation of Operations Policy), which 3 ensures the performance of their essential functions

6 during any emergency or situation that may disrupt normal operations. But where do you start? Keep the following disaster recovery considerations in mind: KEY DISASTER RECOVERY CONSIDERATIONS: Get management buy-in and commitment Understand your agency or organization s regulations Conduct a risk assessment and identify critical priorities Determine response for different disaster scenarios Clearly define roles and responsibilities for personnel Establish effective communication channels Maintain necessary resources, tools, and supplies As high availability and disaster recovery go hand-in-hand, disaster recovery must be included as part of every process and become a part of the IT mindset rather than an afterthought. 4

7 3: Making the Best Choices When it comes to disaster recovery, there are several requirements that will drive your technology choices, including: Recovery Point Objective (RPO) The last saved data that a restarted application reflects following the recovery. Also, a measure of the amount of time or the amount of data which may be lost in the event of an unplanned outage at the primary site. Recovery Time Objective (RTO) - The time that passes before your infrastructure is available. In order to reduce RTO, data must be online and available at another site. 5

8 Distance Data must be recovered on undamaged hardware outside the disaster zone. The distance between primary and recovery sites should be based on likely regional threats. Keep in mind that the distance between data centers will change the options that you have for the deployment of a disaster recovery strategy for all the services IT provides. Matching your business requirements to the technologies that you choose is absolutely critical. You also want to select a technology provider that not only understands disaster recovery best practices, but will also help you leverage your current infrastructure and maintain interoperability between your critical applications. 6

9 MORE ISSUES TO CONSIDER: Data Center design should be a high priority to ensure all the aspects of power, cooling, remote access and security are covered by your disaster recovery plan. Your objectives as well as budget and IT resources will help you decide which approach you want to take toward data center disaster planning choices, including setting up cold sites, hot sites, bunkers, fully-active or active recovery. Server, storage and network virtualization can also help you maximize resources, streamline operations and ensure optimal disaster recovery. Understanding data consistency is essential, as applications and data are interrelated. Businesses and government agencies should recognize that their most important assets are the people utilizing data from their systems. To that end, there must be a personnel aspect to effective disaster recovery and business continuity planning. 7

10 4: A Single, Unified Solution Without a disaster recovery enabled infrastructure, most other disaster recovery efforts will fail. Thankfully, there is a single, unified solution available through World Wide Technology that makes disaster recovery rapid, reliable manageable and affordable. EMC RecoverPoint brings you continuous data protection and continuous remote replication for on-demand protection and recovery at any point in time. RecoverPoint s advanced capabilities include policy-based management, application integration, and WAN acceleration. With RecoverPoint you ll implement a single, unified solution to protect and/or replicate data across heterogeneous storage. You ll simplify management and reduce costs, recover data at a local or remote site at any point in time, and ensure continuous replication to a remote site without impacting performance. RecoverPoint provides: 8

11 Features Benefits Continuous data protection Continuous remote replication Concurrent local and remote data protection Policy-based management Bandwidth optimization Block-level journaling of data changes Data protection Virtual infrastructure integration Employ on-demand local recovery to any point in time regardless of array type. Use bi-directional, heterogeneous blocklevel replication across any distance. Protect and replicate data in many local and remote-site combinations for operational and disaster recovery. Leverage service-level policies that optimize storage and Internet protocol (IP) wide area network (WAN) resources with built-in WAN acceleration and compression. Enhance bandwidth utilization with advanced network data compression. Enable full read/write access to any point-in-time image. Use RecoverPoint to protect against data corruption with flexible protection and recovery options. Simplify and automate disaster recovery in VMware environments with Site Recovery Manager integration. 9

12 5: A Powerful Partnership Vendor selection and partnership is key in disaster recovery because most infrastructure solutions both hardware and software based must Interoperate well. Plus, disaster recovery is complex, spanning internal IT organizations and specific technology disciplines, so choosing your vendors wisely is important, as is having an understanding of the partnerships between your disaster recovery partners. WWT has been an EMC partner since 2003 and has achieved Velocity Signature Partner status. WWT provides hardware, software and service solutions allowing our customers to properly plan, build, and implement their information systems infrastructure. WWT maintains multiple EMC certifications and offers several services to help you design and implement a comprehensive disaster recovery plan, including: 10

13 Data Classification Designed to help our customers develop a complete understanding of their stored information, its value to the organization and mission significance, WWT s Data Classification service allows customers to properly align their information and information protection requirements with the most cost effective solution available. Backup, Recovery and Archive WWT understands that managing information through its lifecycle is a daunting task and designed this service is designed to help our customers meet recovery service level agreements, ever-shrinking backup windows as well as data retention and retrieval requirements, all while maintaining data integrity. Business Continuity Planning and Design With WWT s expertise in business continuity planning and architecture design, our customers can achieve varying levels of uptime as needed. Our Business Continuity Planning Workshop can help you identify the necessary level of protection, 11 and gain an understanding of the various elements

14 involved in business continuity solutions. Once a roadmap has been identified, our Solutions Architects work with you to design an information infrastructure capable of meeting the most stringent up-time requirements. WWT also offers: More Value: WWT brings a geographic focus with an emphasis on delivering value-added services and solutions. Proven Technical Expertise: WWT s commitment to training ensures specialization in specific technologies that enable us to deliver the newest solutions to our customers. Sharper Focus on Customer Satisfaction: WWT provides access to online customer satisfaction tools that allow us to develop targeted plans for continuous improvement. Contact us today to learn more about increasing uptime and implementing a comprehensive yet affordable disaster recovery plan that meets the needs of your organizations. 12

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