Contributed Article By Deney Dentel, CEO at Nordisk Systems, Inc.
With the promulgation of
cloud-based computing solutions, many small businesses are realizing the
benefits of a virtualized disaster recovery plan. Business owners have always
understood the necessity for data backups, but many still employ traditional
methods. Onsite backups to network servers or other storage media are great
solutions for small-scale disaster recovery, like a virus or hardware failure,
but in the event of a large-scale disaster, an onsite backup will be destroyed,
along with the primary data.
That's where a virtualized
disaster recovery plan comes in. The features of such a
plan can help businesses mitigate most of the damage from a disaster. A
virtualized system incorporates backups, data replication and recovery into a
single system, reducing costs and increasing redundancy. There are a few key
elements a virtualized disaster recovery plan needs to function.
An
Automated Backup Tool
The days of once-a-day backups
are long gone. A good virtualized disaster recovery solution will employ a
backup tool that constantly updates the backup media with changes as they
happen. When disaster strikes, backups will contain data that is current up
until the moment of the outage.
An
Offsite Alternate Location
Also long gone are the
astronomical expenses of having to create a completely separate network offsite
to keep a copy of your critical data. Virtualization allows for your backups to
be mirrored in alternate locations. Should your primary backup location suffer
the very disaster it was designed to mitigate, your alternate offsite location
contains an up-to-the-minute copy of your critical data. This form of
replication is invaluable.
Reliable
Network Connections
The weakest point in a true
virtualized disaster recovery solution is a reliable network connection for all
the elements involved. Your plan depends on having at least two networks,
primary and main offsite backup, as well as additional networks in alternate
locations, talking to each other constantly. The networks must have a reliable
connection, operating at a speed suitable for real-time updates to storage
media. Your service also needs to include sufficient bandwidth to allow for the
constant transfer of data.
Once all of the physical
resources are in place, you're ready to activate your virtualized disaster
recovery system. The right software can turn this process into a series of
simple clicks. Once your primary servers have been programmed with the location
of the offsite servers, replication will begin. First-time replication will be
a time consuming process. Additional real-time updates to offsite media will
happen much faster, as only changed segments of data needs to be transferred to
the offsite networks.
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About the Author
Deney Dentel is the CEO at Nordisk Systems, Inc. Nordisk Systems specializes in storage administration
for data recovery and backup purposes. We provide Virtual Tape
Library, Duplication, SVC, and other backup processes for
clients.