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recovery processes for applications, you are putting
your business at additional risk. Automated
application recovery will be more reliable and perform
more predictably because it will not be as dependent
upon the skill of the administrators that are actually
performing the recovery (your best trained
administrators may not always be available when a
real disaster hits).
Step 3: Match the right solutions to your recovery
requirements
Once you’ve determined the key recovery metrics of
RPO and RTO, you’ll need to consider just what type
of IT infrastructure you need to meet them.
Understand the recovery capabilities that various
technologies deliver. Tape has low storage costs, but
supports very lax RPO and RTO and requires a lot of
administrative overhead during recoveries. This,
however, may meet your requirements. If you need
better RPO and RTO performance, you may want to
consider disk. Disk has higher storage costs, but can
support very stringent RPO/RTO, requires
significantly less administrative overhead for
recoveries, and supports access to a variety of next
generation data protection technologies like
continuous data protection (CDP), asynchronous
replication and WAN optimization that solve a lot of
other recovery problems that tape cannot. Finally,
don’t just consider data recovery technologies; look for
technologies that can help automate application
recovery as well for your highest recovery tier
application environments.
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Step 4: Test your DR plans
There is a big difference between theory and reality.
We’ve probably all heard the story about the bumblebee.
Scientists evaluating the aerodynamics of the bumblebee,
given what we know about aeronautics, would have to
conclude that it could not fly. And yet it does.
To be sure your DR plan will work as expected, you
have to regularly test it. If you are using some form
of replication to meet stringent DR requirements,
these are complex configurations that can evolve and
degrade over time in unexpected ways. You want no
surprises - your DR plan should work predictably.
Newer technologies like server virtualization and
application failover/failback can help make DR testing
non-disruptive to production environments and much
less expensive than it has been in the past. Regular
testing also helps you fine tune and improve your
recovery capabilities, evolving them over time as your
own recovery requirements evolve.
Illustration of a DR Plan
Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, IBFX is a
leading provider of online foreign exchange trading
services that serves over 35,000 clients across more
than 140 countries. IBFX maintains two data
centers, a main production center in Salt Lake City
that houses all of their business-critical trade servers,
and a remote data center in New York.
With data growth rates skyrocketing, IBFX was
looking to maintain compliance while at the same