The purpose of a disaster recovery environment is to protect customers in the event of complete loss of a data center property or complete system failure. When implementing these environments, it is important to look at both data and compute resources, regardless of provider or hosting company. Below we will discuss compute resources, but you can learn more about data replication options here. Learn more below and you can also contact Connectria for more information about your disaster recovery options.
Disaster recovery 101
What are the 5 Ps in disaster recovery? Proper preparation prevents poor performance.
Proper preparation will speed up the recovery time process after a disaster and in turn, restore faith and trust with your clients and customers. Treating, implementing, and maintaining a total business recovery plan can be time-consuming but extremely important to ensure your business’s survival. Many organizations don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to this process. Finding skilled staff and maintaining 24×7 services can prove to be a challenge as well. This is why customers turn to host providers, like Connectria, to leverage their infrastructure and be geographically dispersed. No matter the type of disaster you’re preparing for or where your current data center is located, we can help choose the solution that best meets your RTO and RPO requirements.
The ultimate decision
In the event of a true disaster, the customer must decide how long of an outage their business can withstand. The ultimate business decision is either:
- Am I going to pay to have reserved compute resources available to me very quickly?
- Can I avoid paying for reserved compute resources, scramble to get systems shipped to my disaster recovery site, and then bring everything back on line?
What compute resources do you need?
Assuming the catastrophic loss of a data center, here are some additional points to consider concerning compute resources:
- The customers that ANY provider would address first are those that have contracted for a DR plan with compute resources and replication technologies in place.
- Once the contracted DR customers are brought back on line, the provider then shifts attention to other customers. For each of these customers, the provider must figure out the hardware requirements, order the correct systems, stand those systems up, and THEN restore those systems from backup tapes or virtual tape library (VTL). In this scenario, the reality is that it could be weeks before the system is fully operational – mainly due to the lead time for equipment from manufacturers, distributors, partners, etc.
Although none of these topics are fun to think about, it is important to take them into consideration when creating a disaster recovery plan. Think of it as life insurance – contracted disaster recovery is a cost-effective life insurance policy that you hope to never use.
Contact Connectria today to learn more about your disaster recovery options!