Wk 5 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan
The 5 criteria for a workable Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity - Data Protection
Jin Chong
Jin Chong
Creating innovative software products that would help customers gain competitive edge!
I am sure, and this needs no further explanation, that every leader of any organization, big or small has, grasped the importance of implementing a disaster recovery plan to ensure their business operation is largely unaffected by unforeseen disruptions. However, while many of them have put some form of plan in place, most are untested and perhaps not effective enough when disaster strikes. A good example of this was a recent high-profile incident when a huge entertainment provider took months to recover from a hacking disaster.
RTO vs RPO
A watertight disaster recovery plan often requires the implementation of a top-of-the-line or state-of-the-art data backup system. In order to be deemed " safe ", using a well-known "brand" of hardware and software solution can often give you some measure of security. In most cases, the focus is on ensuring that data is backed up and recovery ensured in the shortest possible time-frame; in technical terms, the Recovery Time Objective (RTO). This is probably good enough 10 years ago, but in today's dynamic environment, even an hour's work lost could cost an organization thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Therefore being able to recover the most recent data is now an additional challenge; the technical term is Recovery Point Objective or RPO.
On Premises backup system
This has been the traditional data backup system. Using a "Branded" data backup software, and a tape system or Network Attached Storage (NAS). It works beautifully, as it always has. However, the time taken to recover data is no longer acceptable, let alone its success rate. As most of the backup system compresses data into a proprietary file format, recovery process would involve searching through a file catalogue and extracting from the respective backup file. In my experience, this is further complicated by the time taken to setup and install a recovery system (in the case of a server crash); installing all the necessary software updates of the backup software and reloading of the backup file catalogues before the recovery of data could begin.
Disaster recovery from the cloud
Backing up data to the cloud is in fashion; minimal investment to begin with and pay as you use - at least this is what the providers say. Newly added information is updated to the cloud, and transparent to users. Given the limited bandwidth offered by the profit-driven ISP, one may consequently expect a long recovery time. This is without considering the potential shock you will get on opening the bill should the data grew exponentially without proper control, or indeed any other factors that would otherwise increase the amount of data transferred and the storage capacity.
What constitutes a good disaster recovery and business continuity plan?
- On premises backup storage – backup storage should be situated within the work premises so that the backup data is readily available. This setup allows quicker full backup, if needed, since the backup storage is connected within the Local Area Network. It will also shorten the recovery time.
- Hourly data replication – instead of performing a full backup on a daily basis, new or updated data could be replicated to the backup storage on an hourly basis, providing a recovery point of no more than one hour.
- Endpoint Protection –much application data, as well as user's local work files, are stored in the user profile in the local hard disk. Some of these, such as Microsoft Outlook's PST file, are just too big to be shared from the file server. It now makes more sense than ever to provide hourly replication of data from the users' PC or notebook.
- Offsite replication – If you are serious about replicating offsite, your offsite storage should not be shared cloud storage. You would need to own backup storage which could then be delivered to your disaster recovery site when needed.
- Simplicity is the key – Disaster Recovery is not about using the latest and the most expensive hardware and software. It is about whether you could recover data when needed. The simpler the backup system, the quicker you recover lost data. Replication of data makes practical sense. The replicated data is ready to use as it is.
Drop me an email ( Jin@ITsupport.sg ) and I will be more than happy to share a cost-effective disaster recovery and business continuity solution with you.
About the author
Jin is the founder and managing director of 7-Network Pte Ltd, a one-stop IT provider in Singapore, operating under the brand ITsupport.sg. Jin has also founded Sync4DR, a data protection solution that allows organizations to keep their data safe/secure, while managing data protection in the cloud.
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