When Disaster Strikes

THE NEED FOR COMPLIANCE
In many cases, disaster recovery is no longer an option but a requirement. Recent revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) mandate that data and electronic records be preserved and be immediately recoverable in the event of a civil litigation. “All businesses in the U.S., large and small, are subject to FRCP,” explains Georgis. “A systems failure no longer is an excuse for not being able to produce data in a legal discovery.”
When it comes to disaster recovery, an SMB needs to back up the data that can’t be replaced, and ideally to do it at an off-site location, according to Yankee Group’s Chen. “That is the basic step,” he says. “Beyond that, you can start thinking about high availability and protecting yourself in various disaster scenarios.”
For ProStor’s Georgis, the two basic requirements for any solid disaster recovery plan are that the business data is copied frequently to a separate removable storage medium, and the copy must be stored off-line in a different location far enough away that it won’t be susceptible to loss from the same event as the primary facility. “Data protection does not have to be time consuming or expensive,” says Georgis. “New disk-based technologies are rapidly replacing legacy tape technology for data backup and disaster recovery.”
With a more traditional tape-based backup, customers perform nightly backups of their data and store it off-site. While it may be the most cost-effective option out there, tape-based backup doesn’t offer the level of recoverability that today’s customers need, according to Roudebush. Disk-based options are becoming more and more popular, along with software solutions that provide real-time data protection and application failover. “In a best-case scenario, customers would have both the ability to archive data to tape and also have the capability to protect their data and their applications in real time to be able to recover in minutes after a major disaster or outage,” says Roudebush.
The dual approach will also satisfy SMB clients who aren’t interested in reinventing the wheel, according to NetApp’s Krishnan. “It is difficult to beat the portability and archive capabilities of tape. Many SMB customers have already made some investment in this technology, so a logical extension is to add a disk product into the mix and perform disk-to-disk-to-tape backups,” he explains.

ADDITIONAL OPTIONS
Another option is online backup, which is available from a growing number of service providers. “The backup happens across the network using the company’s broadband Internet connection,” according to ProStor’s Georgis. “The key benefit is automatic hands-off operation. Since only changes to the data are sent over the network, DSL or T1 bandwidth is usually sufficient for the backup operation.” Drawbacks include the high cost when compared with backup to tape or removable disk, and a longer recovery period due to long transfer times for all of the data across the DSL or T1 line.
Krishnan says he is also starting to see early interest in the “DR-as-a-service option,” with resellers providing shared hubs to which many SMBs can send their data for off-site disaster recovery. “Intelligent storage technology can be repurposed, reused, and fully amortized, regardless of what challenges may arise in the future, and becomes even more compelling for the cost-conscious SMB audience,” says Krishnan.
Advanced disaster recovery solutions include replication software as a method of duplicating data between two locations. The newest solutions incorporate virtualization technology, which allows for entire systems to be restored at the touch of a button, or even migrated between servers and sites without incurring any downtime.
For Yankee Group’s Chen, server virtualization is one of the most exciting and promising options out there for disaster recovery. “By virtualizing the infrastructure, it is so much easier to do many of the disaster recovery tasks,” he says.
Just backing up your data only takes care of part of the problem, he explains. “Backup just gets you a second copy of the data, nothing more. If a service goes down, a backup won’t do anything to get it back up and running,” says Chen. “High availability solutions attempt to keep an application available in case of, say, a hardware failure. So, perhaps you would have two servers running the same application, and if one dies, the other takes over. The second server could even be at a different location.”
For Chen, virtualization is the future of disaster recovery. “Prices are coming down as vendors make more affordable solutions targeted at SMBs, but server virtualization is what is really making it easier and cheaper,” he says. “When you have virtual machines that are easily moveable, disaster recovery becomes so much easier.”
Resellers would do well to offer complete solutions rather than piecemeal options, says Pro- Stor’s Georgis. “Resellers can help SMBs by offering bundles that combine software, backup drives, and media to their customers and make it easy to purchase and install,” he explains.
Adds NetApp’s Krishnan, if vendors/resellers make it easy, and provide a full, affordable solution, “reception in the SMB market will surprise all of us who are in the business.” Then you can be sure your customers will be among the survivors if disaster strikes.

LIZ GARONE is a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.