Disaster Recovery Journal

Children have been senselessly murdered along with school personnel, including at least a teacher and a principal.  Firefighters and cops have been ambushed.  Both incidents show the limitations of emergency planning.  As a school teacher and administrator for better than 25 years, and an instructor of firefighters and law enforcement officers at colleges and police academies, I have felt the hurt and the anguish of the most recent events.  You must have, too.

Some of you have written about your experience in business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning, not fully recognizing the lack of such plans in many schools.  I have read your comments and felt your pain.

Most cloud applications are built with APIs, which perform key tasks in helping the application operate effectively.   Cloud APIs can modify the resources available to operate the application, provide an interface that enables a specific capability, and offer methods to interface and extend the application on the Internet.  Administrators can now integrate applications and other workloads into the cloud using these APIs.

The Atlantic.Net cloud API is a RESTful query interface designed to allow users to programmatically manage Atlantic.Net cloud servers.  A RESTful API is a web service implemented using HTTP and the principles of REST (uniform interface, stateless, client-server, cacheable, layered system, and code on demand).  REST is focused on accessing named resources through a single consistent interface.  For example, in Atlantic.Net’s case, calls are made over the Internet by sending HTTPS requests to cloud API server.

2012 - the year is almost over. And what a year it has been. For the DRJ community and team, this has been a busy year of planning, development and continual learning. It has been our goal, as always, to provide you with the best resources available - ensuring that you have the latest and most up-to-date information about business continuity.

We were thinking about our year and realized it would be a good idea to share with you what we think are some of the highlights for us at DRJ for 2012. Of course, we're always eager to hear from you - so please let us know if you think we've missed something from our list.

Desktop as a Service is a relatively new concept in the cloud computing industry.  It is similar to Software as a Service, except it’s not only the software, but the entire desktop environment that is provided as a service.  In essence, the desktop is made available as a service to users, regardless of location or environment.  For example, an employee could work on a client database using his desktop computer and then later, access this same information through his laptop, tablet, or smartphone when he leaves the office.

Desktop as a Service, also known as desktop virtualization, lets users sync their data using a client-server model with all of the computing power coming from the cloud server.  The monitor, laptop, phone, or tablet is simply there to display the information resulting from the processing and to relay information to the server regarding simple control signals, such as the click of a mouse or typing on a keyboard.

Introducing DRJ’s Newest Educational Resource: The DRJ Live Learning Center

By far, the biggest concerns surrounding cloud computing are issues regarding security and privacy in the cloud.  The notion of giving up total control of important, sensitive data scares people, as it is no longer “safe” behind the corporate wall.

A lot of people fear that moving their data to be stored offsite will expose it to various risks and security breaches.  However, the cloud is actually a very safe place to store and share data.  Cloud providers offer varying levels of security, but you can also “beef up” your security by various measures such as integrating your encryption key management solution with your cloud management solution.

Yesterday's bulletin from FEMA was for New Jersey resident victims of Hurricane Sandy to assist them in rebuilding their homes.

In today's fast-paced society, companies of all sizes need affordable ways to deliver quality IT services reliably and continuously.  One of the key benefits of cloud computing, one that is also often overlooked, is how cloud computing can help ensure business continuity, as well as speedy disaster recovery.  Cloud hosting offers a low-cost disaster recovery and business continuity solution for small to midsize businesses and a more cost-effective DR alternative to larger, cost-conscious corporations.

With the cloud as your disaster recovery solution, you can use your in-house systems to run your core business and work with a cloud hosting provider for your business continuity and disaster protection.  With cloud hosting, your data and software are replicated automatically in the cloud, creating increased redundancy.  You don't have to buy extra hardware or software to mirror your data center environment.  Instead, cloud servers can be easily partitioned to create multiple environments in the cloud, and these cloud servers can be spun up and configured in a matter of minutes.  In addition, with cloud computing and cloud storage, you only pay for the resources you use, so the cost is minimal.

A private cloud is infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally.  Put simply, it is a layer of cloud applications running on private, dedicated hardware.  By addressing any special privacy and/or security concerns, private clouds offer all the benefits of cloud technologies to your business, along with an infrastructure dedicated entirely to your use.

If desired, private cloud services offer the ability to host applications on your company’s own infrastructure, thus providing more control for enterprises that require it.  Since many companies may have compliance or regulatory issues preventing them from jumping into public cloud, the cloud service tiers are replicated within a private cloud environment, behind the firewall, and maintained within the parameters of the host organization, allowing them to keep their existing infrastructure if desired.