Written by Sander Puerto
Protecting crucial data remains a top priority for every IT
organization, but figuring out the best BC/DR plan that is capable of
adapting to future changes can be a daunting challenge. Short-term and
long-term fluctuations in business goals and storage technologies are
difficult to anticipate, much less gauge their impact.
While you may feel 100% confident in your BC/DR preparedness today,
have you considered what kind of upheaval any of the following changes
would result in?
Whether driven by executive order or your own desire to modernize, any of these decisions have far reaching ramifications.
Experience teaches us that data replication and site failover
techniques limited to a specific storage array, public cloud, or
hyperconverged system results in two undesirable consequences:
- Subjects you to a costly overhaul of your BC/DR procedures each time
you change any of these variables. And the extent of the overhaul is
far worse than anyone would have anticipated.
- The mere thought of having to implement, test and audit such changes
may be preventing you from considering competing alternatives offering
superior solutions. Instead, you settle for more of the same.
Neither outcome benefits the business.
At the heart of the problem is the lack of standardization even
within the same storage manufacturer for replicating data, taking
snapshots and recovering from failures. That both limits your choices
and drives up your costs. An expensive AFA at the primary site requires
an equally expensive like-model at the DR site, despite having a much
reduced role.
DataCore lets you approach the challenge in a novel way by
implementing BC/DR capabilities in a control plane that operates across
different types of storage manufacturers, topologies and locations.
Rather than confine data recovery and high availability methods to
the characteristics of the current environment with its RPO/RTO
requirements, you can assimilate changes sure to come in the near
future. And do so without taking on a major overhaul of your BC/DR
practices.
The secret sauce providing this level of flexibility comes in a layer of software-defined storage (SDS) services that operate between your applications and your storage.
DataCore offers real-time synchronous data replication and
asynchronous replication across sites regardless of the type of storage
at each location. Cross-site failover and failback are similarly
orchestrated for hyperconverged deployments and 3-tier SANs alike.
Snapshot, CDP and backup /restore methods adapt accordingly.
Knowing that SANs will continue to evolve, new storage manufacturers
will regularly appear, public clouds will prove more inviting, requires
you to approach BC/DR planning in a more enlightened way. What if your
executives asked you right now if your environment is ready to adopt any
of these new technologies? Can you confidently answer "yes" today?
Think about it, companies are constantly searching to increase
storage performance, keep data available longer and reduce storage
costs. Your company is no different and will eventually come knocking
for answers. Investing in software-defined storage will guarantee you
are ready for any of these future demands.
It is time to start aligning yourself with a new vision and position
yourself ahead of the curve. All the facts and trends point to
software-defined storage becoming the cornerstone of every datacenter.
It's totally up to you if you want to embrace the inevitable shift to
software-driven intelligence or find yourself without a proper answer
when your boss says, "hey, can we replicate to the cloud?" The choice is
yours!
One easy way to share what we've covered above with your less
technical colleagues, is to have them watch this 2-minute video on
Hidden BC/DR dependencies. Then together, you can reevaluate your
current Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery strategy and determine
how to make it even stronger with DataCore's software-defined storage
solution.

Business Continuity Planning: Storage-Related Factors Often Overlooked - DataCore Software
For more in-depth tips on how to standardize your storage-related BC/DR practices, see the solution brief: Preserve proven Business Continuity practices despite inevitable changes in your data storage infrastructure