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 The
definition of the necessary level of data backup and
restoration processes are crucial components of
business continuity and disaster recovery planning.
But they are not the only factors that the
enterprise and its IT organizations need to consider
when defining the strategy they will use in
protecting critical data against various disasters
including unforeseen events such as severe weather,
natural disasters or power failures. They also need
to take into account applications, servers,
networks, communications, work spaces, and the
people who run the applications.
How can organizations effectively evaluate their
business continuity needs and ensure that the
technologies in place are effective? One key step is
to conduct a business impact analysis which examines
all the business functions and assesses the damage
if a function suffers outages. Storage systems - and
more specifically the data that's stored in them -
are extremely relevant for business continuity. But
so are the applications, servers, networks and
people who run the applications.
Metrics for business continuity and disaster
recovery include time-lines for recovery point
objectives (RPOs) and factors defined as recovery
time objectives (RTOs). For data to be available
when needed, it needs to be replicated to a remote
site. Depending on the desired RPO, that could be
synchronous or asynchronous data transfer. In some
cases it could be a combination of data that is
replicated synchronously to a location that is
geographically close and then asynchronously
replicated to an out-of-region recovery center.
But data is only part of the equation. Servers,
networks and other IT components also play a major
role. Just having the data replicated might be okay
for a disaster recovery environment with longer
acceptable recovery time objectives. The high cost
of storage, communications, network access, and
software replication are just a few of the
challenges in implementing adequate business
continuity. For a complete real business continuity
plan, more than just the data needs to be replicated
and available at a secondary site - employee
workstations, communication, servers, and
applications need to be available. Only with a
complete business continuity and disaster recovery
plan and strategy in place can organizations ensure
continuous operation of the enterprise and
availability of vital information.
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