Hurricanes, floods, fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, even ransomware — these devastating events can strike almost without warning. Does your business have a plan to not only safeguard sensitive data but contingencies for recovery should a catastrophe occur?
Management should acknowledge their company’s potential exposure to disasters, natural and otherwise. These events can endanger the accessibility and support of an organization’s IT systems and networks.
It’s trite but true: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So how does a business protect the integrity of its IT processes before cataclysm strikes? An effective option is to collaborate with a reputable data center, one with the resources to protect valuable data while keeping it secure and accessible.
Now that you recognize the utility of a data center, what should you look for? Below is a laundry list of essentials your DR service should provide.
An effective disaster recovery plan starts long before storm clouds gather. You want your IT partner to customize a comprehensive and ordered strategy that maintains and monitors network infrastructure and ongoing processes. Too, your employees should be trained and evaluated on how to reduce or avert system downtime.
Proactive planning also encompasses preventive maintenance. Your DR provider should regularly schedule tests of fire detection/extinguishing systems, power supplies/generators and HVAC systems.
How do fiber optic networks provide such outstanding redundancy and protection? In large part, due to bidirectional line-switched architecture. This means that in the event of network element failure, optical signals can be rerouted, either with “protection” spare fibers or by backhauling.
You want the same from your DR provider. Does it offer alternative facilities should its primary data center be offline? Are their data centers sited to prevent damage from floods, fires, winds or earthquakes?
Power failures and loss of environmental cooling can wreak havoc on vulnerable infrastructure elements. Look for facilities with redundant uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), supported by generators that switch seamlessly online if utility power fails. Seek the same redundancy within the data center’s HVAC configurations.
Redundancy also includes instantaneous access to multiple “core” or “Tier 1” long-haul networks should the primary carrier interrupt service.
Is the DR provider’s data center monitored at all times? Are employees required to wear visible ID whenever onsite? Nowadays, constant surveillance of network assets is a must to maintain network integrity and data security.
Your DR provider should have a cross-trained and experienced emergency ops team in place, ready at a moment’s notice to restore operational functionality to networks and systems in case of a disaster. They are the “cavalry” riding to the rescue, freeing local employees to see after their families and homes.
Now that you know, consider Aperio IT as your partner in disaster recovery planning. We provide cloud hosting and backup services to small and mid-sized businesses like yours. It’s never too early to prepare before catastrophe strikes.
Contact us to learn more about planning your Disaster Recovery Plan with Aperio IT.
It doesn’t take much to make the case that modern technology has improved the way we do business. Consider just a few decades ago we were without cell phones, e-mail, and the Internet. Tasks today that take minutes used to take hours. That said, there can be many headaches that come with modern software solutions, but a good partnership with a strong technology support company can ensure that your business IT solutions are running smoothly.
If you’re a business that is due for an upgrade, don’t let lack of technical knowledge or the fear of the unknown deter you from capitalizing on all the ways these new innovations can improve your business. Check out just a few ways technology can advance your business position in the marketplace, and help give you a leg up on your competition.
Marketing
Marketing has changed more in the past 15 years than the previous 100 years combined. New innovations have created many new media options that have expanded our reach and ability to interact with our consumers. Whether you’re installing an upgraded customer relationship management (CRM) system, blasting out an e-mail campaign, managing all of your social media through a program aggregate, or hosting a webinar, new technology is the driving force behind the campaign. Remember, a technology support company will offer services to help you understand how your system can handle this load, and will work with you if you need assistance installing the software to launch some of these exciting campaigns in your business.
Communication
It is hard to imagine there is an entire generation of workers in place who have never had to do business without emails and cell phones. Modern advances give us access to unparalleled communication not only with our consumers, but internally within our own organizations as well. Modern businesses are expected to have comprehensive communications platforms, and a technology support company on call to manage all of the servers should anything go wrong. While a 24-hour turn around used to be acceptable in terms of customer service, those rules have changed; modern advances give us the tools we need to meet the expectations of our consumers.
Productivity
The right hardware running updated software solutions is the key to productivity in your business. In this era, our employees wear many hats and it’s incredibly important to give them the right tools to get the job done quickly and efficiently. Tools like voice to text, online chat, and teleconferencing, are just a few ways to improve productivity in the workplace. Whether it’s in your customer service department, giving customers an online chat option to get instant access to a service representative, to your internal communications and company meetings, working with a technology support company to have the right software solutions for your business is your key to having a productive, efficient workplace.
Modern IT solutions offer an abundance of opportunities for better ways to do business. These are just a few of the improvements you can look forward to when you utilize new solutions. Coupled with a good relationship with a technology support company, you can be sure that your business with survive and thrive for years to come.
Data backup (Backup), disaster recovery (DR), and business continuity (BC) are some of the most misunderstood concepts in Information Technology. There are many misconceptions and myths surrounding Backup, DR, and BC. We are going to define and discuss these important concepts in this series of articles. We will also discuss the importance of having a business disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan, as well as testing your plans.
Disaster Strikes
What is a disaster for your business? There are many things that can be disastrous to your business. We define a disaster as any event that prevents you from operating your business in a normal manner. Many times we think of fire, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, etc. As disasters. But disasters come in many sizes and levels of severity. We had one client that called about a flooded building that was condemned by the fire marshal. The flood was caused by a faulty sprinkler system on the 3rd floor that caused water to flow through all 3 floors of the building. Another client called about an overflowing toilet that flooded their suite. Yet another client called about a complete power and data failure to their building caused by a backhoe at a neighboring construction site. And then there is the disaster of your system crashing to the point of losing everything on the hard drive and your data is unrecoverable.
All of these are examples of disasters that are localized to a single building, a single suite in a building, or just your business’ I.T. department.
Why do you need Disaster Recovery?
According to many expert sources including Gartner, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the University of Texas, 70% of businesses that experience a major data loss are out of business within one year and 94% of businesses suffering from a catastrophic data loss do not survive. With those kinds of odds it is like betting your business in Las Vegas if you don’t have some form of disaster recovery in place.
Disaster Recovery
Let’s discuss disaster recovery in general. DR is much more than just copying your data to an external media such as tape, hard drive, or a cloud-based disaster recovery data center. If you truly want disaster recovery then you need to have off-site, duplicate:
The duplicate IT infrastructure may vary in quantity and level but at a minimum you should have sufficient resources to run all your business critical application and provide access to all your business critical data for an indefinite period of time. Your data should be replicated daily to the cloud based or private cloud disaster recovery location and you need reliable remote access to these resources.
There are many levels of disaster recovery but we break DR down into the five levels listed below:
We will briefly describe the five DR types in this article but leave the detailed descriptions and discussions for the following articles. In the last article in this series, we will discuss business continuity in more detail.
Data Backup
Data backup is the process of making a copy of your data files on another media. Depending on how much data you have, you can accomplish this process by copying your files to a thumb drive, external hard drive, DVD, tape, another computer, or to an off-site location in the cloud (cloud backup). You could also backup important files to one media set and then all your files to a cloud backup. This would allow rapid, off-line access to important files on say a thumb drive while still having a complete set of files available should catastrophe strike.
There are many pitfalls to backing up your data properly that we will continue to cover in following articles.
Cold Disaster Recovery
Cold DR is when you have your mission critical servers duplicated and your data replicated; all in an off-site data center. Data replication typically occurs on a daily basis but may be more frequent. The servers are not actually turned on so they are not using resources on the data center hardware. Switch over may take a full business day so you can be without access to your applications and data until everything is fully up and running. This is usually the least cost disaster recovery approach.
Warm Disaster Recovery
Warm DR is when you have your mission critical Servers duplicated and your data replicated; all in an off-site data center. Data is typically replicated 4 or more times per day. You may also have some additional non-critical servers duplicated in the data center. The servers are actually running and available so switch over is faster and will usually only take a few hours to complete. This DR approach typically costs more than cold DR.
Hot Disaster Recovery
Hot DR is when you have all your servers duplicated in an off-site data center and your data is replicated in near real-time. The servers are actually running and available. Switch over is an automatic process so down time may be as low as 15 minutes.
Fully Redundant Data Centers
This level is not for most businesses as it is more than just disaster recovery; it is about load balancing and high availability. Only companies with large operations utilize this type of IT infrastructure.
Business Continuity
While your business continuity plan incorporates your IT disaster recovery plan and the other departments’ DR plans, BC is much more. Business continuity speaks to how your business will continue to operate when something happens to stop operations at your main or branch facilities. Even if you have only one location it is important to have a business continuity plan so people know what to do.
Testing and Updating Your Plans
And then there are two of the most overlooked parts of disaster recovery and business continuity; testing and updating. Most companies go through the expense of developing DR and BC Plans then put them in a binder and pat themselves on the back that they have completed the process. The next time the plans are looked at is when a disaster has struck. This is the worst time to get the plan out and review it; people are not familiar with what they should do and many times current configurations are not addressed or holes in the plan are found. Having DR and BC plans is a living process that should be revisited quarterly but at least annually.
Microsoft Office 365, a cloud-based productivity service hosted by Microsoft and managed by Aperio IT, provides anywhere access to your familiar Office applications, email, calendar, HD video conferencing, and most up-to-date documents across your devices—all for one predictable fee. With Office 365 your organization can take advantage of the latest Office client and enterprise-ready tools on virtually any device—from laptops to tablets to smartphones—without having to upgrade your organizations servers. With a financially-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee, best-in-class virus and malware protection, automatic backup and server patches, and geo-redundant data centers, Office 365 delivers business continuity that’s easy to set up and manage and doesn’t require upfront server costs. With Office 365 you get the best value to fit your changing needs as you grow your business.
Visit https://aperio-it.com/office365-it/ to sign up for a free demo today.
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