Did you know that the downtime costs due to man-made or natural IT disasters could cost up to $300,000per hour; and this doesn’t take into account losses caused to productivity or reputation or market share. A recent study indicates a startling fact that over 90% of the companies that suffer a system-downtime for more than 10 days due to any disaster never recover and are doomed to fail. Over 43% of these companies close shop immediately and 51% wind up within two years.
Data Resiliency
Data resiliency indicates your data’s capability when confronted with sudden disruptions.
Data is considered to be very resilient when:
- Its resilience is strong enough to help make your system less vulnerable at all times. It also helps control the downtime helps save critical data during emergencies.
- The resiliency is stronger when redundant systems and facilities are used. The redundant system helps by taking over the role of any component that fails and helps to support the organization uninterruptedly.
- When a resilient system is in place, disruptions normally go unnoticed by the users.
- Data resiliency also helps you go ahead with scheduled activities like upgrades, migration, etc. and also helps curb downtime.
Disaster Recovery
A proper disaster recovery plan helps the organization brace itself for any unexpected disruptions, thanks to the detailed instructions contained in such a plan. The plan also helps contend with human error, cyber-attacks, any sort of natural disasters, etc.
The features of a disaster recovery plan include:
- Having preventive measures in place to handle occurrences of unexpected disasters
- A proper mechanism to detect the onset of disruptive events and help prevent them
- Restoration of lost data through corrective measures, ensuring everything is normal
It is to be noted that standard procedures for disaster recovery include duplicating the data deploying backup methods and also having a standby location exclusively for disaster recovery.
A robust IT Disasters Recovery plan should include:
- Provision for handling power outage or loss of connectivity situations where critical applications have to run uninterruptedly.
- An alternate communication channel in the event of mobile and other networks going down
- An alternate location to move to during emergencies that may cause damage to the existing facility.
- Ensuring that security measures are in place at all times and all compliance obligations are met.
- Periodic testing of actual recovery plans
While an IT disasters recovery plan ensures that the business can be carried on with no breaks, it need not cover other aspects like smooth handling of the business processes, human resource management and management of other deliverables.
What it all boils down to:
- Organizations processing huge volumes of data need to have both resiliency as well as disaster recovery strategies in place.
- Creating a proper strategy for data resiliency and recovery, the vulnerability factors of the data center need to be assessed thoroughly first.
- It is advisable to have a contractual relationship with an independent disaster recovery service provider who will work in tandem with the in-house team in a worst-case scenario.
About DataCenterandColocation
DataCenterandColocation is a free professional and non-bias service provided to clients for selecting the right data center, colocation, managed hosting or cloud facility for their requirements. DataCenterandColocation is one of the largest colocation site consulting firms in the United States. They represent approximately 3000 data centers and colocation centers in the United States and Canada. At no cost to clients, they identify specific space, location, power and security requirements, solicit proposals, professionally analyze the responses, compare the strengths and weaknesses of each facility, negotiate pricing and deliver highly competitive bids for colocation. They also perform a comparative analysis of in-house vs. design-build services, wholesale data center space, and data connectivity.