Ever since the second computer was attached to the first network, interdependency has grown. Servers depend on each other to provide vital services and applications are distributed over machines. Disaster recovery is not just a question of recovering a database, when servers also need name and directory services to find each other again across a…
Disaster recovery and business continuity are often thought of in terms of floods, fires, explosions and similar physical events. What may be less obvious to BC planners but just as critical to the survival of an organisation are the non-physical events, such as the loss of a major customer or a major change in a…
The business continuity good practice guidelines 2010 were defined by the Business Continuity Institute as an update to BC planning and practice. The fundamental model maintained the six phases of the BCM lifecycle. What changed was the flavour of the guidelines compared to earlier versions.
Business continuity and alternate site decisions involve a number of possible trade-offs. Depending on the budget to be made available or the flexibility possible in recovering operations for different sites, an alternate site policy can differ from one case to another.
Making the business case for business continuity is an area that companies struggle with. Whereas fires and explosions can have people’s imaginations working feverishly, when a little time goes by and they don’t happen, they get relegated to a “to do” list that might get done by the IT department, but not by others.
Virtualisation may not have all the answers when it comes to disaster recovery, but it can do things that basic tape or online back-ups cannot. It makes it easier to accomplish the three mandatory parts of a successful recovery: restoration of the data, the application using the data and the operating system required to make…