IT disaster recovery strategies under the rise of cloud computing and Virtualization Technologies

The rise of server virtualization and cloud computing technology does not mean that we no longer need good IT Disaster Tolerance planning, as well as the tape technology that may be used in these planning. The following are some disaster tolerance techniques mentioned in JonToigo's keynote speech at its StorageDecisions conference.

As the CEO and Management Partner of ToigoPartnersInternational, Toigo believes that cutting new technologies and budgets should not be a reason for IT managers to focus less on Disaster Tolerance. Disaster Tolerance must be given priority.

"The most disturbing voice comes from providers of server virtualization and Hypervisor management programs," Toigo said in his IT disaster recovery plan speech, "These suppliers are trying to make you feel that you no longer need a disaster recovery system ". Toigo argues that tape is already a technology lagging behind, and he believes that tape is an essential part of IT disaster recovery planning. "The Theory of tape extinction is nonsense," Toigo said. He said that the disk is prone to damage or failure, and we still need tape to store data.

Some suggestions provided by Toigo can effectively protect data and make your disaster recovery system on the right track. His first suggestion is to perform a full backup first. Toigo said, you may be surprised to find that so many companies do not have complete and timely backups, mainly because of budget reduction and workload increase.

"Let yourself do at least the most basic data protection," he said.

He also suggested that the Administrator should record more downtime events as a lesson. "By observing these interruptions, you can learn how to operate the storage architecture more effectively and what needs to be done in the future to avoid these risks," he added.

Recording the event itself, the cause, and the downtime and economic losses can also help you establish a fact-based disaster recovery demonstration for management. Collecting statistics on your company's own downtime is more effective than using industry-standard statistics.

He also informed the audience that they should take data archiving more seriously, bring seldom used data offline from production devices, and separate the data from the protection process of daily data, such as copying and backing up. Toigo also hopes that the participants believe that all data will be necessary when the application is restored.

Using Microsoft Exchange as an example, he pointed out that you not only need email data, but also must have a device driver, email configuration, and Active Directory settings. "This application is not just a collection of its data," Toigo explains. "These are all additional data. To restore the entire environment, you must obtain all the data ."

Toigo also advises its audience to test their data images to ensure that they can operate normally, this is because disaster recovery personnel may rarely know when the volume file is removed or when the application is migrated or increased in a timely manner. "Stop the image and perform a consistency check, so you will find that you want the image to be properly protected by the image," he said, "The worst thing is that you have encountered a problem in the event of a disaster."

Other suggestions for Disaster Tolerance include:

Use Storage Virtualization to avoid being locked by a storage vendor and to protect the storage layer from local and regional interruptions.

Perform a three-phase check on the primary site and the replication site, because the delay of the Metropolitan Area Network will affect the protection mode of transactions and database data.

Back up data between disks within 30 days to quickly respond to disasters caused by user operations, such as deletion of wrong files.

Use your small disaster recovery site for testing. Some technologies you may not have funds to deploy at the production site, but you can deploy them at the testing site. Toigo can deploy virtual desktops, IP phones, and other technologies.