By ajohnson June 3, 2008 @ 8:47 am
I received an email from a co-worker yesterday and thought I’d share it with you.
Subject Line: Another reason not to use truck-based vaulting services!
Besides the fact that truck-based vaulting is going to get very, very expensive because of rising fuel costs… losing tapes seems to be an increasing problem for off-site tape backup service providers.
“Bank of New York Mellon Corp. officials last week confirmed that a box of unencrypted data storage tapes holding personal information of more than 4.5 million individuals was lost more than three months ago by a third-party vendor during transport to an off-site facility,” reported Brian Fonseca from Computerworld.
Ouch!!!!!! Someone forgot the “IT 101″ of off-site tape vaulting - encrypt your tapes!!
By ajohnson May 8, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
In a recent ComputerWorld article, Forrester analyst Stephanie Balarous said “IT managers must still do a better job at convincing business leaders to invest in disaster recovery systems.” She provided some great tips to build a solid business case and we’ve come up with a few of our own.
Stephanie’s Tips
- “Consider disaster recovery investment as a rolling upgrade that consistently augments existing infrastructure and application investments rather than a one-time event that can be delayed.”
- Consider non-natural disruptions such as a power or hardware failure as more common causes for declaring a disaster rather than catastrophic events such as a hurricane, flood, or earthquake. By doing so, you paint a more realistic picture for business executives.
- “Sit down with corporate department heads to map out how an outage – whether temporary or extended – would affect operations, customers and revenues. From that, the managers should build a business report quantifying the risks, and what tools are needed to meet those risks.”
Simply Continuous Tips
- Invest in a multi-purpose solution. For example, you’re planning a server consolidation project and are evaluating your technology options. As you consider your technology options, how about broadening the application of that technology and see if it can be used for disaster recovery purposes as well as your server consolidation project? By choosing a multi-purpose technology like virtualization, it’s easier to convince the executive team to adopt it. They may not approve both IT projects but at least you have laid the groundwork for making disaster recovery improvements.
- Invest in a disaster recovery solution that can put you on a path of continuous protection. You maybe relying on onsite tape backup as the crux of your disaster recovery strategy and have determined you need to upgrade to continuous backup and off-site redundancy. The migration path from onsite tape backup to offsite redundancy is a huge undertaking and requires additional capital and expertise. Choose a solution that can get you there in easy to manage increments and preferably with one vendor who can manage the process for you.
- Add “compliance” to your vocabulary and include it in your pitch. Compliance is a language that executives understand, especially the CFO or corporate controller. For example, if your company has plans to go public in the next 12 to 18 months, there are several BC/DR plans you need to have in place before the IPO. Brush up on the regulations and include them in your business proposal.
See a tip that’s missing? Share it by leaving a comment below.
By ajohnson April 24, 2008 @ 8:43 am
If you’re like most IT executives who are relying on tape backup as the crux of your disaster recovery strategy, you may agree, it’s not much of a strategy at all. And perhaps you are left wondering late at night, “How are we going to keep the email up and running in the event of fill in the blank?” Soon after what seems to be a passing thought, those OTHER fires consume much of your time. Where DO those fires and crises come from anyway?
“Usually from not-so-urgent things that people ignore because they are distracted by the crises of the moment. Then ignored, they cause the next fires and crises,” writes Getting Things Done author David Allen. Mr. Allen wrote a great piece in a recent issue of the Huffington Post entitled “The Curse of the Eternally Urgent.” His tips are relevant to anyone who maybe putting something off for tomorrow instead of completing the task/project today. Sound like someone you know?
After chatting with a few IT guys, I’m starting to understand how putting off disaster recovery planning is easy to do. Especially when you’re working at a growing company and those pesky fires appear. You know what worked in the beginning (i.e. tapes), won’t work today. But take Mr. Allen’s advice and complete the project in a series of action items. “I think you’ll find that many big and important projects have a two-minute-or-less next action on them. You can move several big and important projects forward, and feel better about making progress, by doing a few two-minute-or-less next actions,” writes Allen.
Before you rush off to design the perfect disaster recovery plan (or better yet, outsource it to experts like Simply Continuous), read Mr. Allen’s article.
By ajohnson April 17, 2008 @ 10:49 am
What is DPV? No, it’s not a new drug that promises to grow hair on your balding head or a cure for eyes that tear too much. At Simply Continuous, we’re a practical bunch. We’re experts at solving your IT disaster recovery and business continuity needs and you can’t get more practical than that. DPV stands for Data Protect Vault. Data Protect Vault for Data Domain is a hosted service that deduplicates, replicates, and stores business-critical data offsite where it will be readily available whenever and wherever you need it. With Data Protect Vault, customer data is securely stored with NO tapes, software, or equipment to manage.
As you may know, the RTO for companies using tape backup is pretty slow, but upgrading to a more responsive backup and recovery program can be way too expensive. We wondered, “how can we make offsite backup easy, reliable, AND affordable?” Well, with Data Domain as our partners, we think we came up with a pretty handy solution for growing companies who rely on offsite tape backup. And we did it without you having to break the bank.
Interested in chucking those tapes? Check out the Data Protect Vault for Data Domain services page for more information.
