IT Disaster Recovery - A Finance Perspective

Many financial directors think of IT Disaster Recovery as something that never really happens to them and even if it did the business would be able to get back to business as usual inside a day or so. Assets are safeguarded , backups taken (usually), and unless you are forced to, having a plan and some good intentions are equally as good as having DR equipment sitting around doing nothing utilising the earth's resources at great expense. This philosophy is green too!!!

There are of course tangible business reasons for disaster recovery, namely compliance with customer and supplier requirements , reductions in Insurance premiums (if you can get any) and badges of accreditation such as ISO27001 and BS25999 or industry regulations. Still it all costs money so doing this as slowly as possible using the least amount of resource and cash (any old equipment will do won't it?) means we can achieve almost what we want but without wasting money. No impact on results, job done!

As a former CFO for a small technology sector PLC in the UK I admit that these are some of the thoughts I have had when it comes to disaster recovery and I am not alone (a BT Global Services survey in May 2008 found that 73% of organisations rely on the ad-hoc dedication of their staff rather than their business continuity plans to get them through a disaster). The thing is that unless I wanted to spend more than double my IT budget by having an all singing all dancing duplicate site I may as well be resigned to the fact that if we have a freak tornado come down the Thames Valley or have a jumbo jet fall out of the sky then so be it. I'll take my chances with the insurance company.

Up until a couple of years ago I would still have sympathy with this rather jaded approach to IT DR. If I wanted anything good that would work I could not afford it and if I made compromises on budget and do with less, in all probability it would not work (as we could not afford to test it regularly and risk impacting the business) so why spend anything except on writing the Business Continuity plan wrapped around some best intentions and still be able to tick the compliance box.

The world has however moved on and when we have a 'Disaster' in IT everybody knows about it as we have become more and more dependent on it always being there. Most of our systems are now considered critical (Up from 36% in 2007 to 56% in 2008 in a Symantec survey Aug'08). However IT Disasters which effect the end user are not confined to being a flood or an earthquake, these are quite rare. Most IT Disasters are caused by IT itself, namely hardware failure, software glitches, infrastructure issues and human error. Becoming more frequent with no lesser effect on our businesses in the same Symantec survey above it discovered that one third of companies had executed their DR plan, at least in part, during the past year.

My ignorance has been however how much of a risk to the business an IT disaster can be. Sure it would have a massive impact for a short while but that is based on my assurances by my IT team that all would be well. Perhaps I may have asked the wrong question? The facts however may be a little different. For example if we lost a number of our computer systems by way of a fire, theft, power surge etc . In our plan we would need to source some new kit via the supplier names listed. There is every likelihood that most of this would be delivered next day (unless its Dell) but more probably the day after (because the delivery address has changed), however key peripherals such as Cisco firewalls and routers or tape drives are often not standing on the shelves and in some cases depending on how far up the enterprise IT food chain you are could have a 4 -8 week delivery time. This is indeed worth checking this as well as the estimated time for tape restoration on whatever tape drive you plan to use. Remember tape does not restore instantly and can take many days if you have a lot of data.

Getting kit on site, if one still exists, is just the beginning. This is when the work really starts because all the brand new kit you have just bought is not the same as the original lost in the fire/flood/theft so restoring trouble free from your back up tapes which will hopefully have arrived complete and uncorrupted is not going to happen in all likelihood. The thing is that Windows operating systems become attached to a particular machine specification and unless it's the same specification machine you really have to start from scratch. Let's hope all those build docs are up to date with valid licence keys and that the hardcopies are not destroyed or stored worse, stored on the machines you need to rebuild. At this point there is no known timescale to get back to normal running, it may take a day, a week, even longer if they are interdependent systems. Remember tape does not restore instantly. Again in the same Symantec survey 47% of those with plans reported that it would take a full week to achieve 100% normal operations.

Meanwhile the business has ground to a halt. Customers cannot be dealt with, invoices cannot be raised, salesmen cannot sell and nothing is getting done. The main business focus is to keep customers in the boat who, although initially sympathetic lose faith pretty quickly if you are not back to normal within a couple of days. Competitors you did not know you had will be beating a path to their door with 'new customers only' deals. Reputation of a business is a very valuable asset and takes time to create but can become worthless overnight. Are you really the best supplier for them? Perhaps their previous inertia has been a just bit too cosy.

The acid test to see if this scenario could become reality is to ask your IT team if they wouldn't mind testing their DR plans next week with their annual bonuses riding on it. Only then will the caveats and favourable assumptions be added to the 'a day or two' estimate. When shit happens timescales spiral and you really need a worst case estimate to make an objective assessment of the 'risk and reward' balance of provisioning and planning for an IT disaster.

So what is the answer? Whether you have an expensive DR solution or just sitting out with your arse showing, technology has moved on. With the introduction of virtual server technology breaking the bond between Windows Operating Systems and hardware, a business can be protected to a far higher level at a fraction of the previous cost. There are many different solutions as befits a fledgling industry. Some will be more appropriate than others but most will be better than the Lucky White Heather arrangement that many businesses have relied upon in the past. One thing is for certain though, astronomically high costs are no longer an excuse for accepting the business risk that it won't happen to you.

Ten requirements for a successful virtualised IT Disaster Recovery solution:

• Fast 'Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)# -you need to back managing the situation as soon as possible
• Recent Recovery Point objectives (RPO)* - depending on your business real time replication sounds good, but if the cause of disaster is corrupted software or data, it's now in your recovery platform too !
• Short Test Time Objective( TTO)$ - systems change all the time , if the DR solution cannot be tested easily and regularly don't be surprised if it does not work
• Geographically/Infrastructure independent of the live platform - miles not yards and different utility providers
• Independent of key staff - because if the worst does happen you cannot be sure they will be there
• Easily accessible when invoked - network issues are the most difficult resolve if not planned in advance and there is nothing more frustrating than having your machines working but not accessible to the outside world
• Performance - ensure that the DR solution can cope with the load which may be increased following a disaster
• Beware virtual production machines - being so simple to create, it is so easy to forget to back up, document and provision additional DR protection
• Automate, Automate, Automate - if you rely on a manual routine it's the easiest thing to drop when faced with other short term priorities
• Green - Virtual technology makes best use of resources and economies of scale can be gained through shared infrastructure because baring an all out Nuclear attack not everyone has a disaster at the same time

How to Retrieve Deleted Files From Your Computer

Do you want to know how to retrieve deleted files? Sure, who doesn't, right? Do you want to learn all the computer hacking skills of the elite masters of computer geekdom? Or maybe you'd like to be able to type line upon line of code, and program commands and have the full knowledge of what makes a computer tick? Me neither! I mean, come on... who wants to go through all of that? Certainly not I!

Well, not to worry. There's no need to have to learn all of that egghead stuff just to know how to retrieve deleted files. These days there are software programs that know all there is to know about how to retrieve deleted files so that you don't have to learn anything - heck, you don't even need to think! All the brain power it takes for this task is enough to muster up the power to click a mouse. So how does this software know how to retrieve deleted files? It's simple, really.

For example, if you delete a file, it hasn't really gone anywhere. If you've emptied your recycle bin, it still isn't lost - it's only that your operating system now has no way of recognizing its existence. Nonetheless, it is still right there on your hard drive right where you left it. Using data retrieval software is how to retrieve deleted files because these software programs recognize such "lost" data and is able to bring it back out of hiding. Using such software, you can regain that which was once thought to be long lost and gone forever.

Retrieving Deleted Files From Your Computer

Just the thought of retrieving deleted files can by itself be a source of a sizeable headache or two. We imagine having to learn and utilize elite computer hacking skills that are just way out of our leagues, and if the files we lost are very important we can tend to panic. Where do they all go, anyways? They can't just vanish into thin cyber air. When retrieving deleted files, is there some sort of magic to it all?

Well, no, there's no need for magic, although some of the data retrieval software programs out there that can do the job may seem nothing less than miraculous. If we utilize this kind of software for retrieving deleted files, we don't need to be an elite computer hacker - we can own one. The fact is that when we delete a file, and then empty the recycle bin, we tend to think that it is just simply gone, with no hope of retrieval, as though it just disappeared or dematerialized. However in reality, it's actually still right there on the hard drive right exactly where we left it... it's only that our operating system now has no means of recognizing it anymore, that's all.

What data retrieval software does as it begins retrieving deleted files is it simply searches, finds and recognizes these files without requiring the operating system to be able to wrap its brain around it. Further, if that file has even been partially overwritten by other files newly created in its space on your hard drive, these software programs actually mend the corrupted parts of the file so that it will complete the task of retrieving deleted files in one piece. Now isn't that pretty darned cool? This is why data retrieval software is the best, most efficient and fuss-free way to go about retrieving deleted files.

How to Retrieve Deleted Data From Your Computer

Are you looking to find out how to retrieve deleted data? It's quite simple, once you realize a few fundamental facts. See, when we delete a file, whether we mean to or accidentally, and then we empty the recycle bin, we tend to think it's lost and gone forever. The actual fact is that it's simply irretrievable by our operating system, yet nonetheless it is still there on our hard drive, right where we left it. This is why we need to utilize certain software programs to fish it out of hiding.

Now, in learning how to retrieve deleted data, we also need to understand that while our deleted file still resides somewhere on our hard drive, it can get partially overwritten by other files we write, programs we download, or images that we may wish to store on our computers. This is usually no problem for data retrieval software, as most of these types of software programs can rebuild the small parts and areas that can get overwritten.

Using these software programs is how to retrieve deleted data in the best way because you no longer need to have the hacking skills of those brilliant computer geeks out there - these software programs are like having your very own computer hacker, only without the geeky part. There's no need to keep it fed with Twinkies and Jolt cola, you just make a few clicks with your mouse, and sit back with a cup of coffee while it works it's magic to bring back that which was lost. This is how to retrieve deleted data in the easiest way.

Fully Utilize the Full Benefit of a SAN With Automatic Defragmentation

"Out of sight, out of mind" can be an interesting phenomenon. An example of this is a large piece of furniture, such as an armoire, that's been standing in a hallway for years and causing people to curse and move around it, or bumps their toes or their heads as they rushed by. Finally someone in the household gets fed up and has the armoire moved out of the hallway and into the garage. Problem solved!

Or is it? Just because that bulky armoire has been moved doesn't mean it isn't taking up the exact same amount of space; it's just doing it somewhere else. Someday in the not-too-distant future somebody's going to get mad because they've been having trouble getting the car into the garage and probably yell at the person who moved the armoire there. It's still causing the same problem!

In the computer world, file fragmentation has always been a serious problem needing to be constantly addressed. When it comes to servers, fragmentation becomes much more of a problem simply due to the high number of files being created, modified and deleted by multiple users. Fragmentation not only increases dramatically but it also impacts a wider number of people and their production.

In information technology, a storage area network (SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices (such as disk arrays, tape libraries and optical jukeboxes) to servers in such a way that, to the operating system, the devices appear as locally attached. Although cost and complexity are dropping, as of 2007, SANs are still uncommon outside larger enterprises. Operating systems still view a SAN as a collection of LUNs, and usually maintain their own file systems on them. These local file systems, which cannot be shared among multiple operating systems/hosts, are the most reliable and most widely used. Thus, sharing data between computers through a SAN requires advanced solutions, such as SAN file systems or clustered computing. Despite such issues, SANs help to increase storage capacity utilization, since multiple servers share the storage space on the disk arrays.

SAN was seen as a brilliant way to move much of this traffic off of servers, which it was and is. Because stored data does not reside directly on any of those servers, server power is now used strictly for business applications and network capacity is freed up for other purposes.

But a SAN still consists of disk drives. Fragmentation is still very much a performance-crippling problem on those drives, and (in a similar way to that armoire) just because it got moved off the network does not mean that it isn't there. In fact, because there are additional steps to requesting and accessing files from a SAN, fragmentation can even have more of an impact from the SAN than from a local or server drive.

Utilizing otherwise-idle resources, defragmentation occurs whenever and wherever possible so that performance is constantly maintained, and there is never a negative performance impact from a system defrag.

With some Disk Defragmenters, fragmentation can be removed as a problem, and the SAN solution truly works as it intended. Unlike the armoire in the garage, it is completely gone.