Disaster Recovery Journal

You are an administrator of your company’s IT infrastructure. Before you came along, it was someone else’s job, but you inherited their mess. While another person built the infrastructure, it is now your responsibility to manage everything that happens within it. 

By Brian Zawada, Avalution Consulting
Originally posted on Avalution Consulting’s Blog

Similar to other management systems standards, ISO 22301 is based on the ‘Plan-Do-Check-Act’ model that seeks to improve – in a continual manner – the effectiveness of the organization’s performance through proficient planning, implementation, supervision, review and maintenance.

Virtualization technology has helped IT organizations of all sizes reduce costs by improving server utilization and reducing application provisioning times. However, this produces two new problems that most people do not account for when choosing a data protection solution. First, the cost savings offered by virtualization can disappear quickly in the face of virtual machine sprawl. Second, the link between physical and logical devices becomes harder to map and track, making a virtual environment more complex than most can imagine.

Data protection can become a unique challenge in these environments. For example, backing up and restoring data for a dozen or more virtual machines residing on one physical server can bring all other operations on that server to a complete halt.

Ah June, the month when people start thinking about vacation plans, summer camp and getting away from the office for a bit.... Well, for us at DRJ, we've got something else on our minds - Fall World 2013.

To say that we're excited and looking forward to this upcoming conference would be an understatement. If you're a regular reader of this blog then you'll likely have read about our new venue (Hilton San Diego Bayfront) and you've probably visited our blog to learn more about the changes we have planned.

IT organizations can drive up the cost of storage unnecessarily by treating all data the same and storing it all on the same media. I have said many times that all data is not created equal. When looking for a data protection solution, managing the ones and zeros from the time they are created to the time you can delete them is very important.

Long-term archive and hierarchical storage management (HSM) allow organizations to store data on different tiers based on specific policies, enabling administrators to migrate and store data on the most appropriate tier. For example, older and less frequently accessed data can be moved to a slower, less-expensive storage platform, such as tape, leaving more expensive disk storage available for more high-value data. Automated data archiving also helps organizations ensure compliance with data retention policies and reduce the costs associated with compliance.

If you work within the Human Resources department at your organization, it is highly likely that you have witnessed a transition from traditional web hosting to the cloud over the past few years. Cloud technology provides numerous benefits to a corporation’s HR department besides hosting a website. 

Perhaps the most important benefit of cloud technology is the fact that subscribing to such a service is extremely budget-friendly. With cloud hosting, you are not held responsible for updating the hardware and maintaining the software—the provider handles all this. These are features that you would normally be charged for in a traditional solution. 

There are many data protection products on the market today, and all of them have features and functions that make them stand out. But, one of the major items you need to consider is how easy the solution is to use. When it comes down to “brass tax,” ease of use is one of the most important items. After all, the person responsible for data protection may not have a huge skill set or the time to spend on managing the solution on a day-to-day basis.

When choosing a data protection solution, look for the ability to manage the system from a single pane of glass. The user interface also needs to be so simple that within a few minutes all daily tasks can be completed. As a bonus, look for a solution that sends alerts to your email and mobile device, including everything you need to know about the previous night’s activity and the status of those activities in a report that’s simple to read and understand. 

Everyone knows that cloud computing allows users to access information instantaneously and lifts the burden of continuous server maintenance, but there is another benefit that many have not thought about: the “living approach” to product development. 

Through the living approach, cloud hosting providers develop system enhancements and upgrades based on communicated customer needs and are released to users as soon as they become available. This allows clients to receive new features faster than they would with a normal product development environment, and these features are more closely linked to their personal needs. 

At the end of the day, the real value of a data protection system lies in its ability to restore data when and where needed. If data fails to restore successfully, some part of the business is going to suffer, possibly with costly consequences. As a result, reliability is a key measure of a solution’s ROI.

 You could have the best, most expensive, fastest data protection solution in the world, but if your data cannot be retrieved and used in a timely fashion, the point is moot.

By Jacque Rupert, Avalution Consulting
Originally posted on Avalution Consulting’s Blog

We see a lot of confusion specific to the topic of force majeure. Often, executive management has the belief that force majeure clauses in their contracts protect them from a wide variety of disruptive events, and thus they may not invest appropriately in business continuity plans and strategies. However, the concept of force majeure is somewhat convoluted and often includes many variables. As a result, if an organization does not plan appropriately, it may actually be left unprotected and vulnerable to claims of breach of contract in the event of a disruption.