DR Planning
It makes a lot of sense to at least start the discussion about your Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans TODAY. It's an involved process that requires input from many sources. The Disaster Recovery implementation can be expensive but it can be implemented in stages to spread that cost. Either way, it will always be cheaper than starting your business from scratch.
Many Irish businesses found it took an average of 45.6 hrs to retrieve lost data
How long can you be without your Line of Business Applications?
Disaster Recovery Starts with Backup
If you haven't already looked at our Cloud Backup Services please do. This is fundamental to a disaster recovery solution working for you. Backup is only the first part of the solution however. Disaster recovery is what will allow you, to be back up and running with your systems in a certain time frame. It encompasses everything from your systems, to your people and your premises. Not every business will require the same level of disaster recovery so Revolution IT can work through a disaster recovery plan to support what your business requires to stay running and continue to trade should a disaster happen, from the smallest of outages to the largest. The most important question you need to ask yourself right now is: "How long can my business survive without it's systems"?
A Basic Overview
Lets go all out and say your business premises has been flooded and everything inside has been destroyed. Cheer up - it may never happen! Anyway, losing a complete server and backup storage device to a power surge would be more likely. But in any case, lets go with flooding because there are areas of Ireland getting flooded now that never flooded.
OK, so you have a tape backup of your mail server and file server at home. Excellent! Where's the tape unit to put that tape into and start the restore? Flooded. Wheres the server to restore that tape to? Flooded. How long will it take to get a new tape unit? 4-5 working days. How about 2 replacement servers? 10-15 working days. Then build them and get the operating systems up and running? 3 days. Where do you put this equipment after it arrives - your premises is being repaired or is still flooded? In the meantime you have no contract templates, or filed agreements, financial data is gone also. No company contacts details lookup avilable, your sales reps have no system to connect to and place orders. Getting replacement digital certs for ROS and banking online will take a week. How many hours or days can the business keep going without access to these systems? Your suppliers and customers might have copies of important emails with pricing and contract information, but they might not. It's not an ideal situation is it? Here is where disaster recovery arrives on the scene with a cape fluttering in the breeze like the hero it is. It will:
- Recover in minutes all IT systems and information detailed in the plan
- Present all your servers for off-site operation
- Quickly re-establish your on-site IT systems when you and your premises are ready for use again
