Disaster Recovery Planning

Major Disaster Recovery Failure with an Outsource Provider

webmaster — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:06:12 -0600

Virginias Department of Motor Vehicles along with 25 other state agencies hasnt been able to process requests for licenses and ID cards. These systems are supposed to be up and running six days after the outages started to appear.Northrop Grumman manages Virginias IT infrastructure under a $2.3 billion IT services contract.

The Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) said in a statement that teams have been working throughout the weekend to restore data. In a nutshell, the IT infrastructure of the state of Virginia was reportedly crushed by an EMC storage area network failure. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that several systems are still down. The same paper said that Northrop Grumman will have to pay a fine for the failure. And the real kicker is that recently revised its contract with Northrop Grumman and extended the deal for three years. The state paid an additional $236 million for better service from Northrop Grumman.

Highlights of the Revised Contract - Operational Efficiencies

Consolidates and strengthens Performance Level Standards with a 15% increase in penalties across the board if Northrop Grumman fails to perform on clearly identified and measured performance standards. - PAY-UP
Improves Incident Response teams to determine technology failures and expedite repair - FAILED
Institutes clear performance measurements for Northrop Grumman that agencies can easily track - FAILED
Adds new services to contract such as improved disaster recovery and enhanced security features - FAILED

Among the key parts of the VITA statement:

Successful repair to the storage system hardware is complete, and all but three or possibly four agencies out of the 26 agency systems have been restored. Agencies continue to perform verification testing.

Progress continues, but work is not yet complete for the three or four agencies that have some of the largest and most complex databases. These databases make the restoration process extremely time consuming. The unfortunate result is the agencies will not be able to process some customer transactions until additional testing and validation are complete.

According to the manufacturer of the storage system (EMC), the events that led to the outage appear to be unprecedented. The manufacturer reports that the system and its underlying technology have an exemplary history of reliability, industry-leading data availability of more than 99.999% and no similar failure in one billion hours of run time.

The outage was blamed on the failure of two circuit boards installed and maintained by EMC. It is a big disconcerting that two circuit boards can bring down a states IT infrastructure for nearly a week.

Among the things that dont add up in the Virginia IT outage:

Why wouldnt these boards be replaced quickly?
Why was there a single point of failure?
Service was restored for 16 agencies, but 10 require a lengthy restoration of data. Where was the disaster planning? After all, Northrop Grumman touted its disaster recovery for the state just two years ago.
Where did the IT management fail?

How to request funding for DRP BCP

webmaster — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:58:14 -0600

In these tough economic times how can CIOs get the budget necessary to support Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning.

The following steps should be taken when planning a presentation seeking to gain management support of a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity program.

Define the scope, objectives, and requirement - It is not enough to have an objective of getting more funding or gaining executive support. Define exactly how much funding is needed, or exactly what form the executive support should take.
Verify expectations - Define what management's expectations for the meeting are.
Focus on business continuity - It makes more sense to get the commitment for resources to achieve a 24-hour recovery time objective (RTO) than to demand the resources for a two-hour RTO and get nothing.
Anticipate objections - realize that the number one objection is the cost, and prepare accordingly. Let the results of the business impact analysis (BIA) justify the "investment" (not "cost").
Prepare a competitive analysis - Executives care what their competition is doing. Annual benchmark studies and surveys are good sources of information on the investments in DPR/BCP being made by industry, by size of organization, etc.
Prepare examples of what has happened to others - Remind the executives of the regulations that affect their business, and the impact of not complying with them. Examples of such regulations are Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley. In addition, research companies that have been damaged significantly in highly publicized news stories because of their failure to act responsibly.
Define the Risk/Reward of DRP/BCP - Research and develop the business continuity program's return on investment.
Package Resources - Work with vendors like Janco Associates who can package infrastructure solutions like the Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Template to accelerate the process and minimize the cost.
Get buy-in for key decision makers before you meet to ask for a decision - The effort will have greater success if key decision makers and other departments within the organization support the DRP/BCP program. The power of a presentation supported by key executives, marketing, IT security, physical security, human resources, facilities, and risk management is highly significant.

Backup requirments defined

webmaster — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:31:28 -0600

CIOs, CSO's, Disaster Recovery Managers, and Business Continuity Mangers constantly are working to improve their recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) by performing fast, non-disruptive backups, and by performing data restoration. All comprehensive data protection solutions involve many considerations and contingencies.

Here are some of the things that can go wrong with your data and the backup requirements that need to be addressed:

Accidental or malicious deletion of critical data - Requirement that provides the ability to quickly and easily restore individual files and folders.
Data that is lost or corrupted over a period of time - Requirement to roll back individual records to fix database corruptions. The ability to recover data from any previous point in time, and have it as granular as possible.
A crashed disk - Requirement to recover a disk volume is different than recovering a single file, but it should be done just as quickly, and with automation to help keep operational disruptions to a minimum.
A server failure - Requirement to restore operations when replacing a broken server may be complicated by the need to install different drivers on the new system if the hardware is not an exact match. It helps to have the capability to move the application workload to a standby server (with different hardware) or virtual server while the system is being replaced or repaired.
A local or regional disaster - Requirement when you lose an entire office to fire, flood, or other disaster, have a current copy of your important information in another location that is outside the disaster zone.
Remote offices and branch offices - Requirement to have a process in place to restore with minimal technical support as remote and branch offices often do not have the luxury of having an on-site technical resource to assist in backups and restores.
Resource-intensive backup processes - Requirement frequent or even continuous backup that is not resource-intensive .
Security breaches - Requirement to secure data. When moving data between sites, it needs to be protected from potential security breaches. A breach of data security, whether actual damage is done or not, can be devastating to your company's reputation, as dozens of large enterprises and government agencies have found in recent years.

DRP versus BCP

webmaster — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 08:46:38 -0600

Disaster recovery planning is one of the most important jobs of the IT professional. It includes working with upper management and winning the cooperation of all departments to make a working recovery plan. The two main parts are the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP). These have to go hand-in-hand procedurally. The BCP focuses more on the schedule and timing of the DRP, so that in the event of a disaster the business can function normally. The three stages of a DRP are Prevent, Detect and Correct.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity a critical part of enterprise operations

webmaster — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 12:31:54 -0600

Disaster recovery is becoming an increasingly important aspect of enterprise computing. As devices, systems, and networks become ever more complex, there are simply more things that can go wrong. As a consequence, recovery plans have also become more complex. According to Janco Associates (the author of the Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Template). For example, fifteen or twenty years ago if there was a threat to systems from a fire, a disaster recovery plan might consist of powering down the mainframe and other computers before the sprinkler system came on, disassembling components, and subsequently drying circuit boards in the parking lot with a hair dryer. Current enterprise systems tend to be too large and complicated for such simple and hands-on approaches, however, and interruption of service or loss of data can have serious financial impact, whether directly or through loss of customer confidence.

Appropriate plans vary from one enterprise to another, depending on variables such as the type of business, the processes involved, and the level of security needed. Disaster recovery planning may be developed within an organization or purchased as a software application or a service. It is not unusual for an enterprise to spend 25% of its information technology budget on disaster recovery.

Nevertheless, the consensus within the DR industry is that most enterprises are still ill-prepared for a disaster. According to the Janco Associates Disaster Recover Business Continuity web site, Despite the number of very public disasters since 9/11, still only about 50 percent of companies report having a disaster recovery plan. Of those that do, nearly half have never tested their plan, which is tantamount to not having one at all.

Security and DRP play a role in CIO Infrastructure Design

webmaster — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 13:37:31 -0600

Designing IT Infrastructure requires CIOs to consider the globalized world they are now in. It is necessary and valuable for CIOs to understand the fundamental trends that are pushing businesses to redesign their operations around this new reality. Factors they need to consider are:

Security - With the growing importance of digital applications and data, the sources of threats to enterprise data have multiplied dramatically. Everything from natural disasters to criminals to corrupt sources within the company might try to steal or corrupt data. While businesses do everything that they can to stop these threats in the first place, they still must be prepared to recover from these threats as quickly as possible.
Business Continuity and Disaster Planning - As businesses have expanded the need for anytime, anywhere application access has become a requirement. At the same time, follow the sun (global 24/7) operations have shrinking maintenance windows and a need for applications to be running at all times. Delay or loss of data for any reason system failure, natural disasters has a domino-like effect across the entire organization, at any time of the day or night.
Flexibility - Most businesses now operate across international borders and CIOs must be able to respond to opportunities and challenges faster than ever before. CIOs are usually battling well-resourced organizations that may be based where the opportunity originated, or another globalizing company that is reaching out for new opportunities. In order to compete, a business has to be faster to deliver a product or service as good, or better, than that of potentially any other company in the world.
Simplicity - Increases in technology have typically led to increased complexity. While per unit costs of technology are always decreasing, in aggregate companies see an increase in cost. With the pressure on IT to act less as a cost center and more as a way to increase the profitability of business units, just adding more storage, more bandwidth, or additional technologies throughout the organization is no longer an acceptable approach to managing information technology. Successful CIOs are investing in numerous technologies including; continuous data protection, virtualization, and wireless connectivity. They are trying slim down ITs footprint while increasing their businesss competitive advantages. The CIO is typically in a difficult position, assessing where to try and cut costs while still moving forward with a plan to continually enhance IT services to the business.

Nature can distroy anything that man can make

webmaster — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:25:46 -0600

Nothing man-made can withstand the forces of nature. In certain regions of the country, natural disasters are not a question of if, but of when. The main headquarters of many companies are located in North Carolina, right in the heart of Hurricane Alley. In addition, Southern California is earthquake and brush fire central.

They know a hurricane, earthquake, or brush fire is going to be coming along at some point; it is inevitable. At the worst, you are looking at physical damage to facilities and systems, or flooding. At minimum, it will knock out power and your network circuit. Even if power and network stay up, just the fact that you do not have physical access to your system may prevent you from doing a crucial operational task.

How a CIO should chose a backup site

webmaster — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:35:51 -0600

Disasters cost money, interrupt business operations and may cause the enterprise or government agency to fail, which makes planning a business continuity issue. Disasters can interfere with or even terminate IT and communications services. It does not matter whether the disaster affects the enterprise, government or service provider. Floods, fire, volcanoes, earthquakes and other events can destroy a primary and backup site if they are too close together.

Telecom service providers can offer expert advice on where to locate a backup facility and should position themselves with CIOs to offer both consulting and services. After all, they have experience planning for their own primary and backup facilities, as well.

A CIO's selection of the backup site location will always have risks and liabilities attached to the decision. Adequate and reliable communications to the backup site and communications between the primary and backup sites are what most service providers can successfully offer to the CIO.

In choosing a backup site, CIO's must first determine how big a disaster plan for and budget for it. The level of disaster planning increases as you goes down the following list:

Building closed/evacuated
Loss of power
Loss of communications
Facility damaged/destroyed
Community disaster (10-to-30 mile range)
Regional disaster (30-to100 mile range)

Successful Disaster Planning and Business Continuity Planning Processes

webmaster — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:41:31 -0600

The success of most business depends on Information Technology. However, business and technology environments are becoming more complex. Being prepared to respond to non-typical events - both planned and unexpected - that threaten to disrupt essential business systems and processes, is a major corporate concern.

A recent survey found that disaster recovery planning is a priority for many organizations. Eighty-six percent of IT executives said they have a disaster recovery plan in place at their organization. While the economy has affected IT budgets overall, 43 percent of IT respondents indicated the economy has not affected their disaster recovery investment (including planning) - with another 33 percent, saying investment in disaster recovery has become more important.

Organizations cannot control whether or not they will be affected by a natural disaster, power outage or other unplanned incident, but they can work to help ensure their business is prepared to respond to and recover from these events with minimal impact. Disaster recovery planning is an organizational requirement that can help reduce risk and help companies effectively respond to situations that threaten to disrupt essential business processes.

Janco Associates has found that enterprises that are successful:

Focus on employee safety. Every disaster recovery plan needs to begin by addressing the physical safety and psychological well-being of employees. That means the plan must include alternative locations where employees can go if a primary work site is unavailable, as well as incident notification and escalation strategies. In addition, the plan needs to be well communicated throughout the organization so everyone knows how to respond in a disaster situation.
Conduct a business and IT impact analysis. Carry out a thorough analysis of people, information, application, and other resources to build an understanding of the consequences - financial and operational - of losing vital components. Take particular care to uncover interdependencies across the organization that is critical to staying in business. This analysis will provide a solid foundation for establishing recovery priorities and timeframes in your plan, allowing you to make informed decisions on where and how much to invest in disaster recovery.
Plan with business operations in mind. Involve all key stakeholders in the planning process, including IT, business leaders, human resources, corporate communications, and physical and information security managers. Be sure that in planning you coordinate with other business units in your organization to avoid potential conflicts, such as multiple business units depending on the same facility as a secondary site in response to an interruption.
Make the disaster recovery plan a living document. Business processes and IT systems undergo constant change in every organization. Your disaster recovery plan needs to keep pace with new workflows, business applications, and computer systems. Disaster recovery planning software can provide best practice methodologies to help you navigate through planning decisions and plan updates. In addition, regular testing will help you demonstrate your ability to recover and pinpoint areas for plan improvements.

Disaster recovery and business continuity planning issues

webmaster — Thu, 27 May 2010 00:26:17 -0600

Disaster recovery and business continuity management and contingency planning are essential especially in these economic times. However, the creation, testing, and updating of a sound disaster recovery and continuity and contingency plan is costly and complex.

For example, initially it is necessary to understand the underlying risks and the potential impacts of disaster. This is the primary building block upon which sensible and cost effective business continuity plan or disaster recovery plan is built. When the plan itself is created, there are the maintenance and testing phases, to ensure that the plan remains current. Even having arranged all these matters there are the external auditors to consider - and of course, there is the not so small matter of ISO 27000, SOX, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS compliance.

The industry standard solution is the Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Template by Janco Associates. The template includes all of the right tools to assist with business impact analysis and risk analysis. You can quickly create a core plan (some of Janco's clients have created an operational plan in less than thirty days), maintain the plan, audit the DRP BCP, and create a cost effective budget to support the disaster recovery business continuity process.

DRP Critical Component of Risk Management

webmaster — Sat, 22 May 2010 09:08:16 -0600

Disaster Recovery (DR) is a critical component of IT disaster planning and risk mitigation strategies, and compounded in difficulty by ever growing data volumes, distributed computing, and new technologies. How can you get creative in protecting more data, recovering more swiftly, but also saving some money?

Download this outline learn how the Janco Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Template can reduce RPOs and RTOs even more.

Disaster Recovery Guide
Business Continuity Planning

ISO 27001, ISO 27002, ISO 17799, Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA Compliant

What is Disaster Recovery and how does the Disaster Recovery Planning Template help?

This DRP Template can be used for any sized enterprise.

The template and supporting material have been updated to be Sarbanes-Oxley compliant. The complete package includes:

Disaster Recovery Planning and Business Continuity Template
Business and IT Impact Analysis Questionnaire
Work Plan
Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Audit Program

With lost data being a competitive liability, there is no room for downtime in today's business world.

Backup strategies for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

webmaster — Tue, 11 May 2010 11:56:33 -0600

In order to meet current demands for application and data availability, many enterprises are increasingly relying on the wide-area network (WAN) as a storage transport resource for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning. This enables Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity operations to be centralized - reducing redundancy and lowering overhead - and to leverage innovative disk-based backup and replication technologies offered by the leading storage vendors. Decentralized, tape and other removable media Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity strategies are simply too costly and labor-intensive. In practice, they fail to meet the recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTOs/RPOs) demanded by companies facing increasingly stringent customer service and regulatory requirements.

Disaster Recovery versus Business Continuity

webmaster — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:56:01 -0600

Disaster recovery is about re-establishing IT services in the face of large-scale hardware failure or sabotage, facilities failure and/or regional natural disaster. Disaster-recovery capabilities are measured by the amount of time it takes to re-establish services and the amount of data loss. Business continuity is the ability to continue operations with little or no downtime in some of these scenarios.

Lesssons learned from Iceland Volcano

webmaster — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 10:20:07 -0600

The Icelandic volcanic dust cloud provides some concerns for disaster planning and business continuity planning:

Business redundancy - businesses that have a natural redundancy and resilience capability built in as part of everyday operations were well placed before, during and after these events.
Crises will happen - crises are a routine part of business of as usual and not a special event.

While recent events may well be an opportunity for business continuity, disaster recovery and crisis management consultants, businesses that focus on implementing redundancy and resiliency into business because it is good for business anyway and achieve business continuity, disaster recovery and crisis management capabilities as a bonus, are likely to get more from these activities than those that just use consultant to develop business continuity, disaster recovery and crisis management capabilities in isolation.

Volcanic event business continuity and disaster planning requirements

webmaster — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:15:02 -0600

Until recently most enterprise did not consider volcanic events as something they should plan for. However the volcanic eruption in Iceland impacted global transportation and commerce. With that in mind, disaster recovery - business continuity plan for volcanic events should contain the following elements:

Identification and mapping of the hazard zones;
Impact of travel limitations
Register of valuable movable property (excluding easily portable personal effects);
Identification of safe refuge zones to which the enterprise operations will be moved in case of a dangerous eruption;
Identification of evacuation routes; their maintenance and clearance;
Identification of assembly points for transport for evacuation;
Means of transport, traffic control;
Shelter and accommodation in the refuge zones;
Inventory of personnel and equipment for search and rescue;
Security in evacuated areas; and
Alert procedures;

Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Basics

webmaster — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:48:08 -0600

The basics of a Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Plan are defined in the Janco Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Template. They are:

Develop the contingency planning policy statement. A formal department or agency policy provides the authority and guidance necessary to develop an effective contingency plan.
Conduct the business impact analysis (BIA). The BIA helps to identify and prioritize critical IT systems and components.
Identify preventive controls. Measures taken to reduce the effects of system disruptions can increase system availability and reduce contingency life cycle costs.
Develop recovery strategies. Thorough recovery strategies ensure that the system may be recovered quickly and effectively following a disruption.
Develop an IT contingency plan. The contingency plan should contain detailed guidance and procedures for restoring a damaged system.
Plan testing, training and exercises. Testing the plan identifies planning gaps, whereas training prepares recovery personnel for plan activation; both activities improve plan effectiveness and overall agency preparedness.
Plan maintenance. The plan should be a living document that is updated regularly to remain current with system enhancements.

Defining backup requirements

webmaster — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:28:56 -0600

Here are some of the things that can go wrong with your data and the backup requirements that need to be addressed:

Accidental or malicious deletion of critical data - Requirement that provides the ability to quickly and easily restore individual files and folders.
Data that is lost or corrupted over a period of time - Requirement to roll back individual records to fix database corruptions. The ability to recover data from any previous point in time, and have it as granular as possible.
A crashed disk - Requirement to recover a disk volume is different than recovering a single file, but it should be done just as quickly, and with automation to help keep operational disruptions to a minimum.
A server failure - Requirement to restore operations when replacing a broken server may be complicated by the need to install different drivers on the new system if the hardware is not an exact match. It helps to have the capability to move the application workload to a standby server (with different hardware) or virtual server while the system is being replaced or repaired.
A local or regional disaster - Requirement when you lose an entire office to fire, flood, or other disaster, have a current copy of your important information in another location that is outside the disaster zone.
Remote offices and branch offices - Requirement to have a process in place to restore with minimal technical support as remote and branch offices often do not have the luxury of having an on-site technical resource to assist in backups and restores.
Resource-intensive backup processes - Requirement frequent or even continuous backup that is not resource-intensive .
Security breaches - Requirement to secure data. When moving data between sites, it needs to be protected from potential security breaches. A breach of data security, whether actual damage is done or not, can be devastating to your company's reputation, as dozens of large enterprises and government agencies have found in recent years.

Disaster Recovery Plan Ensures Survival

webmaster — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 01:13:12 -0600

Every IT manager knows the importance of having an effective and fast disaster recovery plan (DRP) and Business Continuity Plan (BCP). Organizations without an adequate plan may find themselves out of business quickly after experiencing a major disaster. Janco Associates has found that over 80% of all enterprises that do not have these plans never open their doors after a disaster strikes.

Organizations that ensure survival following a disaster understand the basics of creating a good plan; however, there are many obstacles and pitfalls that can easily be avoided.

Based on working with thousands of customers, Janco Associates has developed a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Template that includes everything that you need to create a custom Disaster Plan.

You can download a full copy of the table of contents by going to http://www.e-janco.com/Register_drp.asp.

Backup Strategy

webmaster — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:01:10 -0600

Enterprise data protection and backup schemes range from the very simple to the very complex. In all but the simplest environments, you typically see a patchwork of software and hardware functionality layered together to prevent nearly any kind of data loss or corruption. Unfortunately, the technology deployed often defines the capabilities, rather than the business defining the capabilities that the technology must deliver. This is a dangerous trap to fall into -- both for you and for your organization.

Like an onion, a well-designed data protection scheme has many different layers, with functionality provided by different pieces of software and hardware. A wide range of technologies may come into play: SAN-to-SAN replication, SAN-provided storage snapshots, off-host backups, disk-to-disk backup, deduplication, virtual tape libraries, and server-based snapshots.

Data De-duplication is a required tool for Disaster Planning

webmaster — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:43:14 -0600

When it comes to backup and recovery, mid-market organizations are challenged to improve backup performance and reliability, manage costs, keep pace with capacity requirements, improve recovery performance and reliability and deal with tape media management. These requirements are driving deployment of disks with de-duplication in backup processes. But data de-duplication is only beginning to take hold in backup processes. For organizations employing tape-based backup strategies, use of de-duplication could enable disk-based protection while driving the cost of secondary disks closer to that of tape storage.

Bank of America site goes down....

webmaster — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:32:44 -0600

Bank of America was investigating an outage that affected an unknown number of customers but had ruled out a cyberattack, a representative said. Their disaster recovery plan was not activated.

"Our online-banking service is available," spokeswoman Anne Pace said in a telephone interview on Friday afternoon. "We ruled out a cyberattack, but are working with partners to determine the root cause."

Disaster Recovery Plan Template Business Continuity

The Standard - Over 3,000 Companies World Wide have chosen this DRP/BCP Template

Checks found the site down during the morning and afternoon, as late as 2:50 p.m. PST. Several people reported the outage to and Business Insider reported that the site was down most of the morning. Several others reported that they were able to get through to the site, although at least one said it was sluggish.

Bank of America's Twitter account was reporting that "Our Web site is available. However, some customers are having intermittent issues with access. We are working to determine the root cause."

One person reported that he discovered a work-around: "I tried going to the site via my mobile device, and it works! So then I typed the URL that my mobile device uses into my desktop browser, and I can get in. So it doesn't seem that the Web site, per se, is down, only the 'normal' entry portal?"

DR Plan tools defined in Janco DR Template

webmaster — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:00:25 -0600

Your DR plan should be updated with tools that are collaborative in nature, enable teams and people to communicate remotely at any time, over any channel, and without dependency upon your IT infrastructure.

Emergency notification and communication technology should provide not only an automated solution for message delivery, but also:

Enable companies to reach end users and allow them to respond anytime and from anywhere.
Enable notification over any text enabled or voice enabled device (inbound/outbound).
Provide local and global notification capabilities.
Provide a centralized, interactive tool for executing your DR plan, monitoring tasks and enabling real time coordination of resources and status updates.

Many organizations' DR efforts fall short once initial notifi cation has occurred. Rarely do organizations have a centralized method for employees, DR teams, executives, customers, etc., to access the DR Plan, task lists, or documents necessary to recovery efforts such as contracts and purchase orders. Prior to purchasing the Janco Disaster Recovery Plan Template, one large regional health care provider complained that once notifcation occurred, they were not able to coordinate the simplest of tasks. In a crisis situation, often times employees have no method to stay apprised of information. Stories abound of disaster recovery teams that become occupied answering employee phone calls and answering basic questions about a crisis, and are unable to focus on their primary task - managing through a crisis to recovery.

Cloud backup as a strategy for Disaster Planning

webmaster — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:18:19 -0600

One of the biggest challenges of managing a backup infrastructure is that no one wants the job. In large companies, the backup administrator position is an ever-revolving door often staffed with junior people. In smaller companies, backing up the infrastructure is a peripheral duty that is often ignored. The result is the same in both cases: bad backups.

One potential solution to this problem is cloud backup services - or managed backup services, depending on your preferred terminology. The idea is simple: Outsource this undesirable part of IT to a company whose staff specializes in it and youll never look back.

Cloud backup services take advantage of many of the technologies mentioned here, but allow customers to use the service without having to manage the process. Instead, customers simply install a piece of software on the systems being backed up, and the cloud backup service does the rest. But as with any backup system, make sure you have a way to verify that backups are working the way theyre supposed to be working.

The unglamorous world of backups is like the rest of IT: You never hear from anyone until something goes wrong. Modernizing your infrastructure, when planned and executed carefully, can reduce your liability dramatically. But as you make those improvements, remember the backup mantra: Test everything and believe nothing.

Backing up now much faster

webmaster — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:05:02 -0600

Seagate Technology LLC today at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas released its first USB SuperSpeed 3.0-enabled external hard disk drive, the BlackArmor PS110, which has up to three times the performance of its previous USB 2.0 products.

The BlackArmor all-in-one USB 3.0 toolkit packages a 500GB 7200rpm, 2.5-inch portable hard drive, power cable and PC express card to enable USB 2.0-enabled laptops to perform with the 4.8Gbit/sec speed that USB 3.0 specifications allow.

While USB 3.0 theoretically represents a 10-fold improvement in I/O

speed over USB 2.0, Seagate said the data speed of its BlackArmor USB 3.0 portable drive is based on "real-world testing." The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface allows transfer of large files to and from the external drive at sustained transfer rates of 100MB/sec.

For example, Seagate claims that a 25GB high-definition movie can be transferred in just four minutes on the BlackArmor USB 3.0 drive. That compares to the 14 minutes the transfer would take using a traditional USB 2.0 drive.

More than 75% of all American firms have DRPs in place

webmaster — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:58:57 -0600

According to AT&T's 2008 Business Continuity Study, more than 75 percent of American companies have a business continuity plan (BCP) in place, with the largest enterprises leading the way at 88 percent and the smallest (100 employees or fewer) at 75 percent.

These percentages are significantly higher than just four years ago, according to the same study. That is not surprising, given the dire predictions of business failure following a major disruption or loss of data. Although current figures are not readily available, past studies indicated that many small to mid-size businesses never reopen following a major data loss, and more than half close within two years after the event. And that was during a period of economic expansion. For companies locked into one of the sluggish or soft areas of today's economy, failure rates would almost certainly be higher.