This is where secondary sites can play a big part in the enterprise computing equation. By implementing a secondary data centre away from the primary data site, it minimises the possibility of both facilities being simultaneously compromised. Here are five ways that can help IT organisations implement a disaster recovery strategy that maximises system availability for day-to-day operations.
Immediately identify problems In the past, a key challenge in executing timely disaster recovery was a slow alerting process to inform IT employees of an issue and subsequent problem diagnosis. Now, advanced clustering technology notification and reporting capabilities can pinpoint when an outage occurs and immediately notify administrators of the problem. Clustering technology then takes immediate action by starting up applications at the secondary data centre and connecting users to this data centre. After that, administrators can use configuration management tools to diagnose the cause of the downtime such as identifying a change made by another administrator. Reduce downtime with automation For many organisations, system recovery is a manual process that often needs time-consuming troubleshooting. This is where an automated approach such as high-availability clustering can help eliminate vast amounts of downtime. If a system fails in the primary data centre, the software can restart the application automatically on another server. The administrator may be notified by a text message or e-mail and has visibility of any problem at all times. More importantly, the series of activities needed to maintain business continuity is handled by the software, with limited action from IT employees.
Flexibility through secondary sites For most IT organisations, secondary sites are viewed as cost centres, sitting idle most of the time. New advances in server provisioning software now enable secondary sites to be used for test development, quality assurance or even less critical applications. If a disaster strikes and the primary data centre goes down, administrators can use provisioning software to automatically reprovision server resources to match the production environment.
Realise value in virtual environments Server virtualisation employs virtual machine technology that allows multiple operating systems to be run on a single server, each working independently of the others with its own operating system.
Restarting virtual servers at secondary sites has traditionally been a manual process, needing personnel who may not be available during an actual disaster. New clustering software now allows companies to deploy server virtualisation and get the same level of automated disaster recovery benefits they can expect in their physical server environments. Administrators can fail over applications from physical servers to virtual servers and manage physical and virtual resources from a single graphical user interface, significantly reducing hardware costs at secondary sites. Regularly test disaster recovery plan With automated failover capabilities, IT organisations can test recovery procedures using a copy of the production data – without interrupting production, corrupting the data or risking problems upon restarting a production application. This capability means that tests can be run during business hours instead of over the weekend, reducing employee overtime. As an added benefit, automated tests run during peak production periods can recreate and approximate the conditions that would occur during a true failover situation.
Configuration management tools also give more confidence to IT managers that their disaster recovery plans will work by ensuring that servers at disaster recovery sites are consistent with those in production sites. The writer is technical consultant manager, pre-sales at Symantec Malaysia.