The south west and west of Ireland got pummelled last week and it has been continuing.\u00a0 We woke up on Friday to stories of how half of Cork was under water.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t helped by the ESB who had to open the gates at some of their water reservoirs which sent even more water down to the already at risk Cork city.\u00a0 We saw photos of submerged streets, cars and businesses.<\/p>\n
This was a time when a plan was needed.\u00a0 Most businesses will have insurance.\u00a0 That covers the cost of lost stock, buildings and assets.\u00a0 But what about lost customers and revenue?\u00a0 No insurance will even come close to that.\u00a0 Even the smallest of businesses rely on computers now.\u00a0 They don\u2019t do too well with high levels of water.\u00a0 I wonder what all those small, medium and large businesses were doing for that situation?<\/p>\n
At work<\/a>, one of the services we provide is secure online backup for operational and DR backup\/recovery purposes.\u00a0 That covers desktops, laptops and servers.\u00a0 I\u2019m not involved in that side of the business on a day-to-day basis but one of the engineers told me that we\u2019ve already helped out a number of businesses who were hit by the floods.\u00a0 All they needed were alternative places to restore their data and away they went, keeping their business operational, even if at some limited capacity.\u00a0 They could maintain relationships with their customers instead of just going completely off the air.<\/p>\n What about those businesses that did the usual, \u201csafe\u201d, \u201ctrusted\u201d backup?\u00a0 No backup is useful for DR if it isn\u2019t stored in a secure and remote<\/em> location.\u00a0 Tapes or disk arrays in your computer room that is neck deep in water won\u2019t really do too much for saving the business.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Ah \u2013 but you\u2019ve got a DR plan with live replication?\u00a0 Superb.\u00a0 Can I ask a quick question.\u00a0 Where is it?\u00a0 Is it on the same flood plain?\u00a0 Is it in the same power supply region?\u00a0 Two examples of organisations I\u2019ve dealt with in the last 2 years come to mind.\u00a0 One was a organisation in Dublin.\u00a0 They wanted a DR solution where they could replicated all servers from their offices to a DR site or Site B.\u00a0 We went in as a hosting company offering a solution.\u00a0 (a) They were unwilling to share technical information, e.g. required specifications, so we couldn\u2019t price anything and (b) they decided they wanted to use their second office as a DR site.\u00a0 Where was the second office?\u00a0 It was around the corner on the same flat area and probably in the same power supply region.<\/p>\n Then there was the organisation I met with in Limerick a few months ago.\u00a0 Their campus is split across the Shannon, the largest river in Ireland.\u00a0 On the good news front, one side is in the Limerick grid and the other is in the Clare grid.\u00a0 The bad news?\u00a0 The river Shannon is reportedly about to burst its banks with the forecasted rain coming into Ireland.\u00a0 That isn\u2019t going to do this organisation much good considering the campus is literally on the river bank and the region is as flat as a pancake.\u00a0 <\/p>\n If you are doing DR then take the same approach as you should with tapes.\u00a0 Place the location as remote as you can afford with a different geographic area\/profile.\u00a0 Make sure it\u2019s on a different power grid and preferably with dedicated substation, diesel generators, etc.<\/p>\n You can do DR on the cheap.\u00a0 There are service like what our company offers for online backup.\u00a0 Alternatively, have a look at Microsoft\u2019s Data Protection Manager solution: DPM2<\/em>DPM4<\/em>DR.\u00a0 Here you place DPM in your production site and it backs up to disk.\u00a0 You then either get dedicated\/colo hosting, another thing our company does<\/a>, and place an identical DPM installation there, maybe also with a tape library.\u00a0 That hosted DPM installation can backup the data store from the production DPM site, maintaining knowledge of its internals.\u00a0 Then it can optionally stream to tape for archive.\u00a0 There\u2019s a cheap DR!<\/p>\n Alternatively, you can spend a fortune on host based replication (DoubleTake, etc), implement cross-site SAN\u2019s (HP LeftHand or Compellent \u2013 requiring at least 100MB dedicated links) or do SAN controller based replication (HP EVA, XPS, EMC Clarion \u2013 all requiring dark fibre).\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The south west and west of Ireland got pummelled last week and it has been continuing.\u00a0 We woke up on Friday to stories of how half of Cork was under water.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t helped by the ESB who had to open the gates at some of their water reservoirs which sent even more water down … Continue reading “Not Got That DR Plan Ready? Bit Late Now, Isn\u2019t It?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t