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What is worth remembering when planning a disaster recovery budget?

When was the last time your server crashed? How did this affect the work of your organization? In 2013, the Ponemon Institute, which conducts independent research in the field of information security, conducted a survey that showed that 91% of organizations were faced with the problem of data center idleness. And although this statistic is not so terrible in itself, according to expert estimates, 30% of the victims could not recover their work, and this is a serious cause for alarm.

Business executives always think that all these horrors will happen to someone else, but not to their organization, although not only they argue that way. Hurricanes and earthquakes come to mind to most people with the word "disaster", but in fact it is not always natural. Disaster can turn into a human error or a cyber attack. That’s why it’s always worth having a “Plan B” to protect your mission-critical applications and data. It is also important to know that a five minute idle time is not just a loss of profit possible at this time. This is an opportunity to lose brand reputation and customer loyalty.

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What is worth remembering when you or your management decide to save on recovery measures?

Disaster Recovery Cost-Effectively


According to the Ponemon Institute's research, an average enterprise needs an average of 2 days to recover work. The average annual loss on the company (similar to the average temperature in the hospital, but still) is $ 366363. There are also hidden losses - this is loss of profit and loss of brand reputation. For example, if at 8 o'clock the ticket reservation system of a large airline falls, the next time customers who have lost a lot of time fighting the overlays will think twice before booking a flight in it.

Organizations that use disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) providers have identified savings as a key advantage of using a public cloud for disaster recovery. These are the results of the Aberdeen Group study - a research company that allows business structures to understand the implications and results of technology adoption. Do not be afraid of the need for too large capital investments in improving reliability, you can simply sign an agreement with the provider DRaaS.

Costs range from $ 60 to $ 120 per month for one server depending on the number of servers needed to back up the organization and the size of this data, and also depend on factors such as recovery-point objective, RPO, control recovery time (objective, RTO), etc.

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Recovery is easy to organize


Today, data recovery in the cloud is accepted by businesses of various sizes much easier than five years ago. Before the advent of virtualization, the cost of recovery was at least three times more, because several DCs, specialized software and extensive network connections were required. It is very expensive to do this in the "material" world. Therefore, only the largest organizations could afford a recovery budget. Now virtualization has made the backup and recovery procedure easier, by encapsulating virtual servers into several files, data is easily transported, and the cost of the procedure is reduced.

Recovery procedures give data owners a variety of recovery approaches. Need to protect the entire infrastructure or only first-level applications? Is the recovery time and recovery point set within applications of levels 1-3? Gone are the days when it was necessary to create, maintain and pay for an additional site, completely identical to the main one.

Reduced data loss


According to a study conducted by the Aberdeen Group, there are three factors that put pressure on organizations to use cloud backup: the risk of business interruption, the loss of critical corporate data and the length of the recovery process. Those who have included the recovery procedure in the service agreement spend three times less time on this and recover twice as much data.

Imagine you are running a campaign in Delray Beach Florida. It's great ... before the hurricane happened. This happened to Fleet Lease Disposal in October 2005 after Hurricane Wilma, which destroyed the company's office and one of its main data centers. Fortunately, the company quickly recovered from the losses and quietly worked the next 4 months from a backup data center in New Jersey. After 4 years, the company learned that the additional site also lacked adequate equipment and bandwidth for backup recovery.

By starting to work with DRaaS providers, the company managed to recover data in less than an hour, save thousands of dollars and man hours, beating off the costs of the recovery procedure in less than 18 months. Using data replication and cloud services, the company can now count on a quick recovery, especially during the hurricane season.

Recovery is quick and efficient.


According to a survey conducted by the Aberdeen Group, companies that use DRaaS, quickly restore their work - this is the second advantage of using cloud services.

Many people think that saving data on removable media is similar to backup. Data protection is important, but the ability to efficiently and quickly recover data is essential in the recovery process. Storing data without using virtual resources and the ability to easily test recovery beyond failure conditions is just a backup that does not ensure business continuity.

For example, one leading biotechnology company has simplified the backup process to such an extent that it simply abandoned the use of several data centers in favor of one, whose infrastructure produces full data backup and all applications.

Testing 1, 2, 3 ...


Businesses can try out their recovery plan at any time. It is very important to make sure that the IT environment starts at another site, and all data will be saved. Companies can rehearse actions during planned or unplanned work stoppages and make sure that the backup recovery plan works. In 2012, Forrester published data that only half of the companies conduct full-scale testing of backup recovery once a year. And although companies cite a lack of resources for testing, these processes are now mostly automated and require less human intervention.

When Verdande Technology needed to expand its infrastructure without making significant investments, it turned to cloud backup recovery providers to take flexible, cost-effective measures to expand the test space, while reducing the amount of equipment and associated difficulties.

“Now we have both the flexibility and control that we wanted,” said Peter Verlaine, the company's IT engineer. “We can remotely set up a test site in accordance with the requirements of testing, and our providers invoice us only for what we use. We no longer have to worry about where, when and how we will test. ”

The task of testing is to ensure the availability and recoverability of all systems that are needed in the work. After all, when the failure actually happens. Thinking about it is too late.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/236983/


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