Businesses need to ensure high availability of their operations in the event of unplanned downtime such as a system failure, security breach, human error or natural disaster. A disaster recovery plan ensures that mission-critical systems remain available with minimal to no disruptions, and less-critical applications and data are back online within pre-determined recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO).
A comprehensive disaster recovery plan includes many facets of your organization—your computers, network, phones, employees and customers—but perhaps most important to your operations is how quickly your IT department can restore your systems and data.
An effective disaster recovery strategy can help your business:
- Protect its reputation for reliability
- Boost productivity with 24×7 access to mission-critical applications
- Mitigate risk of financial loss by keeping revenue-producing systems up and running
When evaluating disaster recovery solutions, it’s important to consider:
- Speed of restored operations in the event of unplanned downtime (power loss, flood, etc.)
- Financial risks, such as revenue loss per hour, or the lifetime value of lost customers
- Desired recovery point and RTO
A Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Solution
An effective disaster recovery solution typically includes a mix of the following components:
Replication
During replication, files are copied from a primary location to a secondary location for use in the event of a system failure.
Clustering
While similar to replication, clustering is performed on a volume level to provide scalability, load balancing and system availability. It allows automated failover between servers in the cluster and facilitates close monitoring of critical applications and their components.
Mirroring
Mirroring creates dynamic, real-time copies of data volumes which lessens the risk of data loss. Mirroring is accomplished by using Level 1 Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) features through the motherboard or via a controller card built into a dedicated disk array.
Virtualization
Virtualization software has found new uses in disaster recovery planning. Optional tools allow virtual machines to transfer or fail over to dissimilar hardware, enabling the virtual machine to be online in minutes.
Failover Sites
A failover site 160 + kilometers or more from your primary location can help ensure that secondary systems are not negatively impacted by local natural disasters.
Co-Location/Hosting Centres
For some organizations, a dedicated failover site or buying redundant equipment may not be cost-effective. Third-party co-location or hosting centres are an excellent alternative.
Your CDW Canada Account Manager and certified specialists are ready to assist you with every phase of choosing and leveraging the right solution for your IT environment. Our approach includes:
At CDW we conduct a trial discovery session to understand your goals, requirements and budget which helps us create an assessment review of your existing environment and definition of project requirements. Once the initial evaluation is complete, we provide detailed vendor evaluationssolution recommendations, future design and proof of concept and arrange procurement, configuration and deployment of the final solution. Since we provide end to end solutions, we provide ongoing product lifecycle support.
Contact your CDW account manager to conduct a consultation or call 1.800.972.3922.
