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Green IT for Disaster Recovery - Part 1

Posted on Wed, Jun 17, 2009
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As energy climbs the list of corporate priorities, the call for "green IT" disaster recovery services and solutions is proliferating.  Rising energy costs and consumption in datacenters are hot topics; whether the concern is saving money, deploying new IT services, keeping the datacenter running or sparing the environment.  Services and features such as server virtualization and data deduplication provided by a qualified offsite data backup company offer economic and ecological solutions that reduce energy costs from the desktop to the datacenter by streamlining a business' IT infrastructure.  This article is Part 1 of 2 which will discuss ways in which server virtualization serves as a green IT disaster recovery solution.

SERVER VIRTUALIZATION

Virtualization technology allows the ability to contain and consolidate the number of servers in a datacenter.  In turn, this enables businesses to run multiple applications and operating system workloads on the same server.  Consequently, reducing the number of physical servers decreases power and cooling costs, and provides more computing power in less space.  Further, in addition to reducing costs, increasing IT capacity and decreasing the amount of space occupied in the datacenter, server virtualization helps with the environment.  Every server that is virtualized saves electricity and carbon dioxide emissions. 

Key Benefits of Server Virtualization

Reduce Consumption and Consolidate Servers.  Server virtualization eliminates server sprawl and cuts maintenance costs.  Every virtualized server saves on electricity and cuts the annual costs of energy.

Receive Energy Efficient Initiatives. 
Achieve greater savings and faster ROI. Virtualization is a proven solution for increasing energy efficiency, and many utility providers offer financial incentives for virtualized desktop and server consolidation projects.

Minimize IT Carbon Footprint. 
Every virtualized server eliminates 4 tons of carbon dioxide from the environment, which is equivalent to removing 1.5 cars off the road.

Increase IT Capacity.
Improve server utilization and free up both power and space by running fewer highly utilized servers.

When choosing a remote backup company with comprehensive disaster recovery solutions, server virtualization often tops the list because it right-sizes the largest culprit of energy over-consumption - underutilized desktops and servers.  In standard IT environments, these machines sit idle most of the time, consuming significant amounts of power.  An offsite data backup company which hosts server virtualization for disaster recovery safely consolidates these machines into much less hardware.  Overall, virtualization for disaster recovery provides tremendous energy benefits and a lifeline to data centers that are running low on capacity and high on power and cooling costs.  Choosing a remote backup service provider that provides virtualization for disaster recovery will allow an organization to create cost and energy efficient IT environments which significantly supports the green movement.

Bare Metal Restore in the Disaster Recovery Process

Posted on Thu, Apr 16, 2009
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Bare Metal Restore Explained

When you buy a brand new hard drive, it is completely blank.  With no files or even an operating system installed, it is mere “bare metal”.  In disaster recovery, a bare metal restore is the process of reconfiguring a system from scratch after a disastrous failure.  The term “Bare Metal Restore” refers to the process of restoring data to a bare metal component, reinstalling the operating system and software applications and then, if possible, restoring data and settings.  Enterprises often need to restore full systems onto bare metal for immediate continuance of operations following hardware failure, system upgrades or facility disaster.  These are all examples of hard drive recovery situations that often end up with the same outcome:  a blank hard drive that needs files restored in order to return to the state before the problem occurred. 

The Bare Metal Restore capability employed by some offsite data backup service providers allows IT administrators to quickly recover lost, damaged or corrupted data in a streamlined manner to any bare metal system (at any location throughout the enterprise) without having to manually go through the installation process once again.  In general, Bare Metal Restore allows administrators to restore the complete system on new hardware – regardless of manufacturer – including local data, user profiles, registry/system state, service pack files and encrypted files.

Comparison of Data Restore Methods:

Manual Restores

  • Time consuming - everything must be done "by hand"

  • Operating systems are complex and volatile, with a mix of permanent and variable information

  • Require a broad range of skills, including network, database, operating system and application software expertise

  • Depends on ad hoc data management techniques that are unreliable and often out-of-date

Bare Metal Restores

  • Highly automated - insert a CD, initiate Bare Metal Restore, wait a short time, and restore is completed

  • Reduce complexity and costs for IT administrators

  • Restore the complete system on new hardware, regardless of manufacturer

  • Restores include local data, user pro files, registry/system state, service pack files and encrypted files

Fact: The leading causes of computer crashes are hardware malfunction (44%), user error (32%), software corruption (14%), computer viruses (7%), and natural disaster (3%).

Meet Sox requirements with Remote Backup Company

Posted on Fri, Mar 27, 2009
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The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 legislates how long, and the manner in which, companies store their financial records.  SOX is designed to safeguard against accounting errors and illegal financial activities.  SOX specifically states that electronic records and messages (email/IM) must be saved for at least five years to ensure auditors and other regulators can easily obtain requested documents.

A remote backup company provides the infrastructure that ascertains compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and will use data backup software that enables organizations to address SOX rules without the need for additional equipment or services such as tape libraries and offsite media storage.  Storing financial records with a managed service provider who implements remote data backup solutions ensures critical data is secure and quickly assessable.  Electronically transporting records, using industry standard encryption to secure offsite data backup locations where the data remains encrypted, minimizes the chance of unethical access or destruction of data.  Generally, a remote backup company can help publicly traded businesses and companies (such as accounting firms) who conduct audits adhere to SOX by:
  • Storing data at highly secure, offsite data backup locations;
  • Ensuring that critical records and communications remain encrypted;
  • Using disk-to-disk backup and retrieval, avoiding the hassles of backup tapes;
  • Offering specialized remote backup solutions for storing, monitoring and archiving email and instant messages;
  • Providing disaster recovery services and data loss protection.

When choosing a managed service provider, make certain that the data backup services provided fulfill requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as they relate to record retention, records production, internal controls, record alteration and destruction.

Fact:  20% of SMBs suffer a major disaster every 5 years.

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