Disaster Recovery Journal

Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting is a great solution for those whose needs and expectations are not met by shared hosting or whose website has outgrown their shared hosting plan. Virtual Private Servers provide users with root-level access to the server, while still keeping the ease and simplicity of a shared hosting account.  Essentially, VPS is like a dedicated server, except that you “own” only part of the server’s resources.

You may ask, why not choose dedicated server hosting then? Businesses who choose VPS hosting usually cannot afford dedicated servers, but would like more from their hosting services than provided by shared hosting. While dedicated servers are a big financial and technical investment, VPS offers an “in between” option between this and shared hosting - complete with technical support and no requirement to own the hardware.

The business world today is all about staying current and competitive in your industry. As your small business looks to the future, consider these tech upgrades to help your business remain up to date and competitive in today's market. The following suggestions are relatively easy and affordable for most small businesses to implement:

Ensure Your Internet Speed is Up To Par

For both small- and large-scale businesses, there appears to be a growing trend: executives are adopting cloud computing into their everyday activities with little to no aid from their in‐house IT departments.  In fact, the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is changing at a rapid pace due to the quick evolution of cloud computing and cloud hosting. 

Since the introduction of the computer, IT departments have been tasked with fixing various infrastructure issues regarding storage, email and accessibility.  As cloud technology evolves, it would appear that these positions are also evolving; the use of applications such as Dropbox and Google Apps have virtually eliminated these issues, allowing IT employees to work on more critical problems.

I must admit to having strong feelings of loss, having just discovered the DRJ discussion Board, which many of my virtual colleagues and I offered our collective experience and thoughts to new practitioners of our profession, is now gone, quite apparently due to its replacement by this Blog, but also the DRJ LinkedIn site.  Apparently, it was a victim of being overcome by advancing technology, not to mention some ill-intended hackers who bedeviled Bob with their mischief.  Truly a pity that such people are out there, trying to ruin utterly useful efforts to facilitate the sharing of knowledge.

Now, my colleagues and I have taken to the LinkedIn groups most focused on our respective areas of practice.  I am planning to join John in retirement not long from now.  Howard never seems to run out of disasters to help mop up after, and keeps him busy.  For the moment, I'm just looking for that "one last gig" - a nice project to put a little parting bump in the income column.

It is the winter and in the winter it snows. But sometimes even the most hardened, aren't ready for a massive snowfall. A snowfall that resulted in at least 1o deaths. A snowfall that crippled the east coast of the U.S. and Canada. A snowfall that resulted in traffic and travel bans through-out New England.

Yes, Nemo came fast and hard - and really we weren't ready for it. Here in Ottawa we knew the snow was coming but still people insisted on sticking to their regular routines. This resulted in a high number of traffic accidents and many stories of people getting stuck and losing power. This is not the first time we've had a big dump of snow this season - but it seems that most folks forgot what it was like to drive in such volumes of snow...

The word “downtime” is one that the customer of any hosting provider dreads to hear. It is used to explain the common occurrence in which a server or website hosted on that server is busy or unavailable as a result of scheduled maintenance or even a system failure. Any time a server is down, all the information you have stored on the server—whether it is an application, a website, or files—will also be down. 

This blog brings to an end my review of BCI predictions for 2013 – mainly because as we have now reached February, they are beginning to look more like news comment than forecasts.

Predictions 7 through 10 were about business failures, sustainability, increased outsourcing problems and social media respectively.

How does watching football on Sunday translate into to-do’s for Monday?  More than 100 million people watched the Super Bowl on Feb 3rd, they were expecting a great game and some good entertainment.  What they got was almost a disaster for CBS.  In the recovery planning business, we are always trying to minimize the likelihood of an incident becoming a disaster.  CBS did an excellent job of this on Sunday.

When the power went out in half of the Superdome and the game was stopped unexpectedly, CBS did a good job of keeping people entertained for the 34-minute delay.  While they likely didn’t plan for the lights going out in half of the building, they did have a contingency plan for the power going out and as a result were able to keep most fans watching the commercials and the announcers.  The numbers aren’t available yet, but they might have sold more commercials because of the extra prime-time viewership the “abnormality” created.

When it comes to cloud computing, expectations are high for 2013. Businesses of all sizes—from garage-based startups to multinational corporations—are putting their resources into utilizing cloud computing technologies and services to help them deliver products and services, while reducing overhead operating costs. 

Nearly 50% of all enterprises in North America and Europe are predicted to set aside budgets for cloud investments this year. Additionally, 50% of software development companies are planning to deploy applications in the cloud. According to a research report by 451 Market Monitor, the cloud computing marketplace will reach $16.7 billion in revenue this year, compared to a revenue of $8.7 billion in 2010. 

Today I will look at our predictions 5 and 6, which have some degree of overlap.

Firstly we predicted that “ISO 22301 will start to take off, with certificates issued in more than one country”. Hardly a difficult prediction I know, but still an opportunity to test the often argued premise that many companies had delayed certification to BS25999 because they were waiting for an ISO standard.