Disaster Recovery Journal

HOPKINTON, Mass - EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) today announced that the world's most trusted storage is delivering more data protection with updates to EMC® VMAX® enterprise storage, a new frame-based licensing model for EMC VPLEX® virtual storage making VPLEX more accessible to midrange customers, and a new version of EMC RecoverPoint® that delivers powerful new integration with EMC SRDF.

Today's news is the first wave in a set of new technologies from EMC as the company readies for EMC World 2013 next week in Las Vegas, Nevada. Visit the EMC ECN page on Monday, May 6 at 2:30 pm PT for a live stream of Brian Gallagher, EMC President of the Enterprise Storage Division, keynote from EMC World 2013 where he will discuss today's announcement, and provide insight into other enterprise storage innovations.

WORLD'S MOST TRUSTED STORAGE DELIVERS MORE DATA PROTECTION

Today, the world's most mission-critical data centers trust EMC with their most important data, with 94% of Fortune 50 companies, and 90% of the 20 largest banks relying on VMAX for >99.999% uptime. With new SRDF and RecoverPoint 4.0 integration, VMAX is the only tier 1 storage array offering simultaneous Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and remote copies on the same LUN. Customers can now recover every write, and at any point-in-time between copies. This means that customers can recover from operational errors as well as physical failures on the same data. Prior to this integration, customers could use SRDF and RecoverPoint on the same VMAX system, but not on the same volume. With this integration EMC marries the two business continuance technologies to simplify data protection for the world's most mission-critical data centers.

In addition, RecoverPoint 4.0 is now more powerful. It offers increased scale, flexibility and capacity to protect even more mission-critical applications. The new version is capable of protecting 7X more data , delivers a 4X increase in the number of protected volumes to over 8000 volumes per cluster, and offers expanded asynchronous throughput by over 60% to 400 MB/second.

MORE ACCESSIBLE TO THE MIDRANGE

This year, RecoverPoint will surpass 100-million run hours, protecting over 800 Petabytes of mission-critical information for EMC customers. With RecoverPoint 4.0, EMC is offering a new software-only option (called vRPA) for EMC VNX® storage arrays. This software-only option enables VNX customers to deploy RecoverPoint functionality on existing infrastructure, thereby simplifying deployment and maximizing their existing infrastructure, saving VNX customers up-to 60% on their replication investment.

In addition, EMC is now offering a new VPLEX frame-based licensing model for VNX—saving customers up-to 50% on their VPLEX investment. With strong adoption during its three years on the market, customers trust VPLEX to achieve continuous availability of their mission-critical application environments. With the new licensing model, EMC is building upon and extending that continuous availability to a broader audience.

EMC EXECUTIVE QUOTE:

Brian Gallagher, President, Enterprise Storage Division at EMC

“As customer continue to transform their data centers, EMC continues to innovate and deliver the world's most trusted, powerful and smart storage solutions. Customers want a trusted technology partner that has both a long-term vision and the ability execute. In the last three years, EMC has delivered seven major updates and over 100 new features to the VMAX family. It's this marriage of vision and innovation that is driving our growth—including double-digit growth across VMAX, VPLEX and RecoverPoint. Today's news is a continuum of EMC VMAX delivering the world's most trusted storage and data protection.”

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

·         Visit EMC Pulse, EMC's product and technology news blog

·         Benefits of Deploying VNX with VPLEX

·         Join the conversation by following VMAX, VPLEX, and RecoverPoint on Twitter

·         Ask questions on the EMC Community Network (ECN) during the Ask the Experts – VMAX and Ask the Experts – VPLEX and RecoverPoint discussions

·         Connect with EMC via Twitter,  Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn

ABOUT EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing .  Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

Columbus, Ohio – Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE: EMR) and a global leader in maximizing availability, capacity and efficiency of critical infrastructure, today introduced LIFE™ Technology, an advanced diagnostics and IP-based communications system embedded within the company’s data center infrastructure equipment. This new technology is unique within the industry in its ability to both proactively identify problems and enable remote diagnostics — communicating those in real time to ensure a quick, efficient response. Today’s announcement marks the availability of LIFE™ Technology in North America. LIFE™ Technology is already available in EMEA and Asia.

LIFE™ Technology uses advanced service level data and IP-based communication to alert Emerson Network Power customer engineers of potential issues that may impact the life of systems within the data center infrastructure. In the event of a failure, the response would include the immediate dispatch of a service technician armed with detailed knowledge of the problem and the parts needed to fix it. This is a critical difference that could save an organization hours of diagnostics and potential downtime compared to traditional service organizations that rely upon a technician dispatched to the scene to diagnose the problem on site and locating replacement parts that may not arrive until the next day.

“LIFE™ Technology enabled remote diagnostics and unprecedented communications capabilities will help our customers save hours from failure to repair, drastically reducing Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and minimizing or avoiding unplanned downtime,” said Dave Saliaris, vice president, Life Cycle Management Services, Emerson Network Power. “Until now, the lack of effective, real-time communication capabilities has limited the performance and wide applicability of today’s advanced monitoring and diagnostics systems. Embedded LIFE™ Technology removes those limitations and can decrease the average MTTR by nearly 12 hours.”

The system also reduces Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) by monitoring environmental conditions and usage history and using that data — along with maintenance and service histories — to build data center and equipment profiles. Those profiles help system engineers identify conditions in which a unit may be at greater risk of failure so they may implement corrective actions before a failure occurs.

LIFE™ Technology is embedded in Emerson Network Power UPS systems sold globally. It will be introduced in Emerson cooling systems later this year and in Emerson Network Power infrastructure technologies within the next 12 months. Web card retrofit options are also available for some current Emerson Network Power UPS and cooling systems.

Based off standard data center device data and commands, LIFE™ Technology utilizes standard Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for communication between infrastructure devices and system engineers. The use of HTTP as encapsulating protocol conforms to most common security policies at enterprise firewalls without requiring any direct manual intervention of network administrators. That makes LIFE™ Technology highly scalable and easily deployed in enterprise scenarios with standard security settings.

For more information on LIFE™ Technology or other products, solutions or services from Emerson Network Power, visit www.EmersonNetworkPower.com.

About Emerson Network Power

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE:EMR), delivers software, hardware and services that maximize availability, capacity and efficiency for data centers, healthcare and industrial facilities. A trusted industry leader in smart infrastructure technologies, Emerson Network Power provides innovative data center infrastructure management solutions that bridge the gap between IT and facility management and deliver efficiency and uncompromised availability regardless of capacity demands.  Our solutions are supported globally by local Emerson Network Power service technicians. Learn more about Emerson Network Power products and services at www.EmersonNetworkPower.com.

About Emerson
Emerson (NYSE: EMR), based in St. Louis, Missouri (USA), is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions for customers in industrial, commercial, and consumer markets around the world. The company is comprised of five business segments: Process Management, Industrial Automation, Network Power, Climate Technologies, and Commercial & Residential Solutions. Sales in fiscal 2012 were $24.4 billion. For more information, visit www.Emerson.com.

NEW YORK – Allied Fiber, LLC, the nation’s first builder, owner and operator of a network-neutral, integrated dark fiber, colocation and interconnection system, announces today that it has begun construction on the Miami, FL to Atlanta, GA segment of its planned nationwide network system. Beginning in Florida, the Miami to Jacksonville, FL segment of this route will continue north to Valdosta, GA where it will connect with 150 miles of Allied Fiber’s next-generation fiber optic system that was completed in February of 2012. The route will then continue on to Atlanta.

Several factors are placing pressure on the existing broadband infrastructure in the United States which is driving demand for new, more efficient and flexible fiber and colocation solutions. The exponential growth of mobile, wireless and cloud application traffic means that providers can no longer be supported by the legacy backhaul network infrastructure. Allied Fiber is addressing those needs by providing access to new dark fiber and colocation facilities on a network-neutral, open-access basis. The end user for these physical-layer services includes submarine cable systems, large wireline and wireless carriers and network operators, private enterprises, cooperatives, cable television companies and data center operators.

“Every element of Allied Fiber’s unique system design is being deployed and utilized in this segment which also is expected to drive economic growth, productivity gains and jobs for the counties and States that we pass through,” states Hunter Newby, CEO and Founder of Allied Fiber. “We appreciate the commitment and support of the domestic and global network community and look forward to completing these much needed segments of our system and many more to come.”

Allied Fiber’s Miami to Atlanta segment will comprise 754 route miles, with Jacksonville to Atlanta accounting for 360 of those route miles. The route will initially utilize a 528-count fiber cable from Miami to Jacksonville and a 216-count fiber cable from Jacksonville to Atlanta. Allied Fiber’s route includes a multi-duct design that ultimately will allow for intermediate access to the long-haul fiber duct through a parallel short-haul fiber duct all along the entire route.

“The Miami to Atlanta route marks an important milestone for Allied Fiber,” states Jason Cohen, President & COO of Allied Fiber. “We have listened closely to market demand, and with anchor customers requiring network connectivity options along this corridor, we worked diligently to create a solution. Our route will also intercept several sub-sea cable landing points and key data centers along the Florida coast in Jacksonville, Boca Raton and Miami that will meet additional customer needs.”

Along with intercepting at critical sub-sea cables and data centers, Allied Fiber will have a total of 11 colocation facilities in this segment of the route. There will be six colocation facilities between Miami and Jacksonville and five more between Jacksonville and Atlanta. The Miami to Atlanta route is expected to be complete by the end of 2013.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – 365 Main Inc., a leading data center developer and operator, today announced its New York data center will double in size to address increasing demand of its customers. The data center has expanded within the same building at 65 Broadway with an additional 16,000 square feet.

The company has made considerable investments to build out the facility, which will be capable of serving new customers and meet additional requirements of existing customers. Located in the heart of Wall Street, the larger facility is ideally situated to enable growth of financial services customers.

“365 Main is committed to meeting rapidly growing customer demand in New York and other critical geographies,” said Chris Dolan, CEO. “Strategic expansion is at the core of the 365 Main customer service plan, from the moment we acquired our 16 data centers in 2012. We are translating our vision into meaningful action – our customers and partners are queuing up to capitalize on our increased size and markets.”

About 365 Main Inc.

365 Main was founded by industry leaders Chris Dolan and James McGrath in 2002. They began with a single data center based in San Francisco and grew to five facilities nationwide with 39 megawatts of power under management. These data centers were developed and certified to the highest industry standards and compliance requirements. Today, 365 Main operates 16 data centers nationwide, having earned an industry reputation for high touch customer service, satisfaction and retention. With its years of experience in modern data center development and operations, 365 Main has proven its capability of managing customers with a broad range of requirements ranging from retail colocation to build to suit. 365 Main is a privately held company based in San Francisco. Its financial partners include Housatonic Partners, Crosslink Capital and Brightwood Capital. More information is available at 415-901-5700 or 365Main.com.

Computerworld — IT leaders can be excused for feeling like their supply chains are one link away from disintegration these days. The news over the past few months has been alarming, from outcries over horsemeat in Europe and mislabeled fish in New York to the longer-term impacts on supply chains from environmental events like the tsunami in Japan, monsoons in Thailand and the volcano in Iceland.

(more)

http://www.cio.com/article/732542/Supply_Chain_2013_Stop_Playing_Whack_a_Mole_with_Security_Threats

Take any event, survey or discussion with a vendor, or pick any IT magazine or newsletter, all of them have something on mobility and integrally linked to that is BYOD. Mobility has prominently featured in the top priorities in every survey. It has become as discussed or more a subject as BITA (Business IT Alignment) was a decade back. There are views and opinions on everything going mobile from business process to commerce from company to consumer and everything in between.

(more)

http://biztech2.in.com/blogs/cio-blogs/the-mobility-conundrum/157712/0

Note:  It was not a school shooting, it was a shooting at a school

The following are notes I took during a lecture by Mary Schoenfeldt at the 2013, Partners in Emergency Preparedness Conference. She spent two weeks in the community after the shooting incident.

Since she was addressing an audience of emergency managers she did not specifically address in depth the school system impact or the impact on families.  Instead, she looked at the community response and impact.

(more)

http://www.emergencymgmt.com/emergency-blogs/disaster-zone/notes-from-newtown-and-sandy-hook-community-impacts-042913.html

Disaster recovery has rapidly evolved from being somewhat of an afterthought for decision-makers to a critical business component. 

There are a number of reasons for this, most notably the growing frequency of natural disasters and the noticeable impact that significant downtime has on an organization's revenue. 

A recent MSPmentor blog post pointed out some of the questions owners should ask when they pursue DR solutions. For instance, how much downtime can they afford before it starts to hurt their business? How much data can they lose? How fast of a recovery system can they afford to purchase?

(more)

http://www.xtium.com/blog/automated-systems-mean-better-disaster-recovery/

Lost data and disaster recovery are topics that seems to appear in the news on an almost weekly basis. Between employees and professionals losing devices, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) practices, hacking, natural disasters, or hardware failure, protection of personal and professional information is on everyone’s minds.

For those who work in the legal field, lost digital information can have dire consequences. Litigation lawyers have custody of confidential and sensitive documents regarding their clients, in addition to information regarding the internal and financial operations of the firm itself. All of these must be safeguarded against loss and security breaches while meeting the pertinent state and bar association requirements for safe digital storage. If however, data is lost, a litigation law firm must deal with notifying various governing bodies, the interruption of their regular business, disaster recovery expenses, and potential insurance issues.

(more)

http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/disaster-recovery-lost-data-equals-business-and-legal-headaches-for-lawyers/