Using virtualization for disaster recovery is an emerging concept that is gaining a lot of attention.  In the past, it was expensive to get one server to replicate to the other because those two servers had to be basically identical for complete replication. In order for them to be identical, you needed the same hardware in both the primary and backup locations. With virtualization, those hardware costs are significantly less because of the ability to host several machines on one server.

If your server environment is already virtualized, you have all the hardware and software you need for an effective and inexpensive disaster recovery solution.

Our last blog post in this disaster recovery series will summarize the DR options available and assess benefits versus cost to answer: Is emerging DR technology worth the investment?

Data replication involves data being replicated and sent across your Wireless Area Network (WAN) to a remote disaster recovery location. Replication is scheduled for a certain time every day and automatically backed up to your remote server.

Data deduplication is the process of backing up data by eliminating redundancies. With data deduplication, only one unique instance of data is retained, meaning that every subsequent instance of that piece of data is referenced back to the one saved copy.

Data deduplication is beneficial for both replication and tape backup. With replication, it reduces replication time and bandwidth, improving recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) at the disaster recovery site with increased replication frequency. With tape backup, the increase of data retention on disk may result in lower frequency of tape copies and less tapes being stored off-site.

A more sophisticated version of replication is synchronous replication. This is a technique for replicating data between databases (or file systems) where the system being replicated waits for the data to be recorded on the duplicate system before proceeding. The synchronous replication approach requires access to all slave databases and 100% network availability for the replication to be successful. Therefore, network managers have to plan for synchronous replication and ensure that network availability is sufficient.

With synchronous replication, you have the guarantee that the duplicate system has a copy of the data, but the disadvantages that the primary system must wait for the secondary system before proceeding and replication will not be completed without high network availability.

Synchronous replication is currently the most sophisticated and costly form of data backup.

Coming next Wednesday in our Disaster Recovery series: Virtualization.

Tape has been the most common method for backing up data for years, popular because of its relatively low cost.  With data security becoming a more pressing concern and the emergence of new disaster recovery concepts, many people are quite rightfully asking whether this is the end of the road for traditional backup and recovery, as we know it.

On-site tape backup is what we would call the “high deductible” insurance plan.  Files are backed up to magnetic tape and the tape is stored on-site.  This is a riskier insurance plan because it doesn’t protect your data from a physical disaster that destroys your facility.   If your data center crashes, your data is backed up and can be restored.  If a natural disaster or a fire occurs, however, your data will likely be destroyed.

This is why many companies choose “cold site” tape backup.  With this option, your data is backed up to tape and then the tape is trucked to an off-site location, which we call the disaster recovery “cold site”. This offers you an extra layer of protection and the peace of mind that your data will be restored if a disaster hits your physical location.

There are a couple of big down sides to tape backup: security and recovery time.  In recent times, tape backup has received some negative press with stories of vanishing data at some of the largest financial institutions.

In addition to the security risk, tape backup is known for its time-consuming and cumbersome recovery process.  In many cases, the cost involved in recovering data from tape is so high that it makes more financial sense for a company to purchase new disks for data storage than to restore from tape.

Many companies have turned to a hybrid tape/disk backup solution (D2D2T) where critical data is backed up to disk for rapid restore.  For disaster recovery, the critical data can be copied to tape and a second copy produced for off-site storage. Less critical data can be staged to disk and then written directly to tape. D2D2T enables administrators to stage less mission-critical data to tape over time and ensure that critical data is available for a much quicker restore.

With a sharper focus on security and decreasing tolerance for downtime, many organizations are wondering if tape alternatives are better-suited for backup.  Of course, these alternatives come at a much higher ticket price.

Check back next Wednesday, April 21st for our next post: Disaster Recovery Options – Data Replication.

Disaster recovery options have, for the most part, remained pretty consistent over the years, with a few new technologies emerging recently.  Over the next couple of weeks, we will be posting a 5 part series of blog posts about disaster recovery strategies to help you choose the best “insurance policy” for your data.

With disaster recovery, it is not a case of one solution fits all.  There are several important considerations that dictate how protected your data should be and how much you are willing to spend to ensure this protection.

Key questions that CIOs should ask themselves include:

• What kind of data does your organization store?
• Does your data require high security storage and transfer?
• What impact would the loss of this data have on your business?
• How quickly do you need to recover data in the event of a disaster?
• What kind of technology can your existing IT infrastructure support?
• And, of course, what is your budget?

The answers to these questions will help you determine your disaster recovery requirements in terms of the following key components of a disaster recovery strategy:

• Disaster recovery location – In the event of a disaster, where will you conduct business?  You need to make provisions so that you are able to continue servicing your customers.
• Equipment – In order to recover your lost data, you need equipment on which your data can be restored.  One way to plan for this is to store redundant equipment at your DR location.
• Connectivity – Depending on the DR technology that you choose, you will need varying levels of network connectivity. Ensure that your network is able to support the amount of connectivity required for backing up and restoring your data.
• Recovery Time – You need to determine how much downtime your company can afford.  If your tolerance is extremely low, you must ensure that you choose a DR solution that will provide you with the fastest recovery time possible.

Check back on Wednesday April 14th for our next post in this series: Disaster Recovery Options – Tape.