Money alone can’t buy happiness, and technology by itself can’t buy disaster recovery – but they can both help significantly! IT disaster recovery management needs thought, planning and training of personnel; being aware of what technology has to offer is an important part of this. Check our handy ten-point list below to see if you’re making the most of what’s available.
Archiving systems. Use these to store data no longer needed on a daily basis, but which must still be kept. Archiving is complementary to backup, but not the same.
- Backup. Copying data to secondary storage systems for use in case the primary systems become unavailable. Remember to backup system configurations and application code too.
- Cloud computing. Pay-as-you-go remote data storage and IT operations services. They can increase your resilience and ease financial outlay.
- Continuous Data Protection. Copies data every time a change is made. If you lose the primary copy of your data, this secondary copy should be bang up to date (recovery point objective of zero – or close to it).
- Data de-duplication. Reduces space and bandwidth needed for data, by eliminating duplicates. Can speed up your backups for example.
- Disk. Still the winner over tape for speedily restoring specific files of data. New systems are also giving disks more of tape’s advantages in storage capacity.
- Failover. Configuration of systems to automatically step in if another system goes down.
- Snapshots. Complete copies of data made at pre-defined time intervals (every 15 minutes, every 6 hours, for example). An alternative to Continuous Data Protection above.
- Tape & Virtual Tape Library. Tape is still the winner over disk for cheap, reliable volume data storage. A Virtual Tape Library is a disk-based system that mimics tape storage.
- Virtualisation of servers. Defines logical servers and ‘shares them out’ over available physical server resources. Good for more efficient use of resources and creating a level of resilience.
Found one you’d like to know more about? Let us know. We’ll give you an unbiased assessment about the suitability of any of the technology above for your specific situation and (if appropriate) the best way for you to deploy it.