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No Disaster Recovery, No Excuses… New Strategies that make it affordable
| Guest post by: Marc Potter |
Article Overview: This article discusses strategies for companies of all sizes to deploy data protection and disaster recovery. The idea is that with new technologies available, even the smallest company can now afford to deploy disaster recovery. Also included are strategies for larger companies who are not aware of developing technologies to revisit this must have solution.
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Free Download - No Disaster Recovery, No Excuses… New Strategies that make it affordable By Marc Potter |
No Disaster Recovery, No Excuses… New Strategies that make it affordable
Do you keep your life savings under your mattress? Of course not! I'll bet you don't keep all your company cash in your desk drawer. Then why would you put your business at risk by not having a disaster recovery plan for your data? What is Disaster Recovery (DR) in a nut shell? Disaster Recovery is the ability for an organization to recover business systems and restore data to support business operations following a disruptive event. A disruption event can be as simple as tripping over your server cord and cutting power, so don't think it can't happen. Just refer to disruptive events of Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, and even the completely bizarre weather on the east coast this winter 2010 as very real scenarios where DR plans were deployed in a, "this is not a drill" fashion. Still don't believe me? According to research by the University of Texas, only 6 percent of companies suffering from a catastrophic data loss survive, while 43 percent never reopen and 51 percent close within two years.
Here is my disclaimer! Disaster Recovery is a huge topic that has many subsets of Risk Management and Business Continuance. I am strictly focusing on DR as it applies to IT, data protection and recovery. If you are tasked with putting together a full blown DR plan for your organization, this is a good start, but do not overlook the other critical components of enterprise risk management, physical DR and employee displacement, temporary facility plans, etc. A full DR plan extends beyond IT data protection and includes your entire organization.
Disaster Recovery (DR) is often mistakenly confused with High Availability (HA), which is a term used to define the amount of acceptable downtime a company can accept. Simply put, DR is, "can I recover my essential data and business systems", and HA is "How fast can I recover my critical data and business systems".
The old Paradigm broken The simple idea of DR is nothing new to the large enterprise. The problem is, under the old paradigm, DR costs can be viewed in terms of millions of dollars. In the ancient days of IT dating back to the early second millennium, it was very costly to put together a DR environment. An organization would have to replicate the entire infrastructure at the DR location from servers to switches, applications, firewalls, appliances etc. This left many companies with very generic Dr methods, some only as advanced than a tape backup sent offsite and stored in the IT manager's underwear drawer.
The new Paradigm... (Strategies that make it affordable) Here are a few examples from the "very simple" to "very reliable yet affordable".
Key: SOHO (Small Office Home Office), Small Business (Small office with fee employees), SMB (Small medium business with several to many employees), SME (Small medium Enterprise with many employees over large geography), Enterprise (Very large company, global)
Simple Backups for DR (Minimal DR) Recommended adopter: SOHO, Small Business
Cost: No Excuses cheap. If you can't afford this, shut your doors and find a job, you've probably spent more on your cell phone.
Overview: An External HD's and your operating system's built in backup utility will give even your kid's lemonade business the ability to have simple DR.
The Online Backup Recommended adopter: SOHO, SMB, some strategies for SME, Enterprise branch offices
Cost: Very Cheap to Very affordable
Overview: Online backup services are an affordable way to add DR to your business AND automate your backup process. Smaller organizations can virtually "set it and forget it". Gone are the days of constant babysitting of manual tape backups. For larger companies, online backup strategies can be deployed to backup hard to manage endpoint systems such as remote, branch office or laptop fleets.
Credible online backups services will offer secure, encrypted, semi-hands-off backup services over the internet, (aka in the cloud), to a co-location facility. These "business-class" backup services will also have fully secure and compliant, redundant systems that use high end enterprise class DR and HA infrastructure and methodologies that most smaller enterprises could never afford to deploy.
Note: It is highly recommended to avoid consumer grade online backup services for your business. They do not have the security, availability and enterprise features mentioned above to properly protect your data. Losing your mp3's is one thing, losing your intellectual property, client lists, or accounting data is another entirely.
Enterprise DR and replication with virtualization and other cool new tools. Recommended Adopter: SME, Enterprise
Cost: Considerably less than DR solutions of the past, and with the added ability to add HA for far less cost than mirroring your data center to two locations. A simple replication system using virtualization can start from as little as zero dollars, (using free tools like Citrix XenServer and two existing servers). Think of it this way. At the time your lost data becomes valuable enough to put you out of business, these DR strategies becomes delightfully affordable.
Overview: Recently, methodologies and concepts around virtualization, cheap and smart storage, and cloud computing, have created a paradigm shift. These concepts have given us the ability to remove data and workloads from hardware, and easily move them around to agnostic server configurations across geography, creating affordable and downright cheap Disaster Recovery.
Some vendors to look at include VMware, Marathon Technologies, Novell's Platespin, Double Take, and Stratus Technologies. Smart Storage and SAN vendors to research may include Compellent, Dell Equallogic, Falconstor, Starwind Software, Data Core, and Dot Hill.
Next Steps There is no such thing as a "one size fits all solution", so be cautious of anyone who tries to sell you on a solution without a proper consultation and discovery of your business objectives. There are many different solutions and strategies out there to choose from, so take your list of excuses and roll them into a ball, wrap tape around them and use them for office baseball. That's all excuses are good for anyway, right? Remember, there are no more excuses. Protect yourself. Protect your data.
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About the Author: Marc Potter RSS for Marc's articles - Visit Marc's website Marc R. Potter CEO, Verologix, LLC and Vice President, Business Development Directory Services, Inc. An industry expert, Marc has been cited in several national publications including, Ingram Micro Channel Advisor, and Information Week. He has been invited to speak at industry events on messaging and collaboration strategies for security, compliance and e-discovery. Potter's extensive experience, leadership qualities, and employee empowerment approach have delivered an impressive history of leadership achievements. A former professional musician (guitar player), and music lover, Potter spends much of his time working on new innovative business ideas, and building his business ventures into the premier IT innovators in the world. Most recently, Marc has been working with industry innovator Directory Services, Inc, to make new industry advances in Identity Management and Access Control solutions. Potter is a University of Phoenix Alumni, graduating with a BS in Business Administration. Marc Potter resides in Arizona with his wife Lisa.
Click here to visit Marc's website   3 Reasons Identity Management is a MUST and strategies to make it affordable No Disaster Recovery No Excuses New Strategies that make it affordable 5 Virtualization Strategies for the Budget Challenged and Reasons to Start NOW |
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Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery: A Small Business
- Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery: A Small Business Guide
Donna R. Childs, Stefan Dietrich
2002
"Among the countless tragic lessons of 9/11, an overlooked but important discovery was the lack of preparedness among small and midsized businesses for responding to disaster. While most of the media attention was naturally devoted to...., the very existence of thousands of small businesses was determined by whether or not they had adequate insurance, sufficient technological support, and viable disaster contingency plans."
(People who live in hurricane prone areas need this as well...and who knows when a fire might not strike...)
Table of Contents
1. Preparation
2. Response
3. Recovery
4. SAmple IT Solutions
Basic safety practices
Okay, the TOC isn't [i:2fu76idt]too [/i:2fu76idt]helpful, but there's lots of valuable info in this book, as to ensure that [i:2fu76idt]your [/i:2fu76idt]losses won't be catastrophic. How people cope with suddenly seeing their homes and all their possessions gone, what kinds of insurance to get, etc. etc.
Books for Women Entrepreneurs
- There's a thread for good books in the Resources folder, but it doesn't target books for businesswomen particularly, so I figured I'd start such a thread here.
It doesn't matter how successful you are in your business - it's always possible to learn something new.
In subsequent posts I give Table of Contents and brief descriptions for various titles - most of them devoted to the businesswoman - and sometimes a review. If anyone else has read a review, or has read the book and found it useful, please comment!
1. The Old Girl's Network
2. Mother's Work
3. The 7 Greatest Truths About Successful Women
4. Pitch Like A Girl
5. Workplace Warrior
6. Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the Modern Consumer
7. Contingency Planning & Disaster Recovery
8. She Wins, You Win
9. Napoleon On Project Management
10. Why Good Girls Dont' Get Ahead, But Gutsy Girls Do
11. Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years
12. The One Minute Millionaire
13. Talking From 9 to 5
14. Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambitions
15. 101 Best Home Based Businesses for Women: Everything You Need to Know About Getting Started on the Road To Success
16. Work With Passion: How to Do What You Love for a Living. Revised and Expanded
17. Fail-Proof Your Business: Beat the Odds and be Successful
18. Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End
19. Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide
20. Millionaire Women Next Door: The Many Journeys of Successful American Businesswomen
21. Start Small, Finish Big: Fifteen Key Lessons to Start - and Run - Your Own Successful Business
22. Rewired, Rehired or Retired: A Global Guide for the Experienced Worker
23. The Martha Rules: 10 essentials for achieving success as you start, build or manage a business
24. The Essentials of Entrepreneurship: What it takes to create Successful Enterprises
25. Net Ready: Strategies for Success in the E-conomy
26. The Promotable Woman
27. Leave The Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro shows you how to do more in less time and feel great about it
28. The Work At Home Balancing Act: The professional resource guide for managing yourself, your work, and your family at home
29. Secrets of Six-Figure Women
Re: FREE Toronto Referral Workshop
- Kevin, I'll try to get a copy of the slides and summarize the 14 Strategies. Stay tuned!
Re: Web Business Podcast is LIVE! :)
- Hi GT - you can check out the Flip cameras - good picture quality although the audio isn't fantastic - it does the job though if. I started with it and it's super easy to use and very affordable.
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- We are the UK Market Leaders.....the first to venture into this on a huge scale. What makes this a success is the simplicity of the product and the price, very affordable to the mass market.
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