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While most company CEOs have focus and responsibilities elsewhere, it’s inevitable to think about the “what if” scenario involving IT failures. It would be reassuring to know that the basics of critical IT infrastructure are current and in place – just in case. Here are 5 simple questions that can give you a snapshot of the health of your critical path IT data environment. 1) Is the list of authorized data center users up to date? As resources change, it’s easy have an authorized access list that gets out of date. Unfortunately, these discrepancies tend to show up when a server is in need of attention and everyone is scrambling to figure out how to get the proper authorization along with the pressure of a down system. If a 3rd party data center is sticking to its security protocols, a new authorized person cannot be added via just a phone call – it usually requires the designated security officer from your company to send official notice in writing, or via an online portal, of any changes to the authorized access list. Make sure to embed processes with your HR department to update the data center access list appropriately when new…
How many 9s do you need? What is High Availability? High Availability is a term used to describe the procedures, infrastructure, and system design to ensure a specified level of accessibility to your server. Accessibility requires both power and network connectivity as well as a functional server. If one or all of these requirements are compromised, it is said to be unavailable. This level of availability is most often specified in a Service Level Agreement (SLA). Usually a set amount of credits is issued if the provider were to fail to meet the agreement. The amount of credits as well as the level of availability can vary from provider to provider. The typical metric used to describe a high availability service is in percentage of availability. A table showing the amount of downtime allowable based on a typical availability percentage is shown below. Availability % Downtime per year Downtime per month* Downtime per week 98% 7.30 days 14.4 hours 3.36 hours 99% 3.65 days 7.20 hours 1.68 hours 99.5% 1.83 days 3.60 hours 50.4 minutes 99.8% 17.5 hours 86.2 minutes 20.1 minutes 99.9% (“three nines”) 8.76 hours 43.2 minutes 10.1 minutes 99.99% (“four nines”) 52.6 minutes 4.32 minutes 1.01 minutes 99.999%…
Processor Interviews Mike Klein, Online Tech’s President & COO, in It’s Article on Disaster Recovery Planning. For enterprises dependent on their IT operations—and today that pretty much means all of them—any kind of disaster can be potentially devastating, whether it’s a power loss or a natural disaster such as a hurricane or a tornado. No matter the form the disaster takes, any interruption in IT services means an enterprise is losing revenue and, depending on its nature, may fall out of regulatory compliance. Disaster recovery planning is the key to avoiding or minimizing such loss and to getting your systems up and running as soon as possible. Luckily, with a few basic business needs particular to your own enterprise in hand, a disaster recovery plan can be relatively straightforward to enact. Use a comprehensive disaster recovery checklist to make sure you analyze your infrastructure from all angles, including the ones you wouldn’t immediately think of, says Jeff Grace, president of NetEffect, a computer and IT support and consulting provider. Email communications, for example, may be seen as of secondary importance, but it is actually typically one of the first things needed if a true disaster strikes, says Mike Klein, president…
Online Backup to a Secure Data Center Delivers Cost Effective Disaster Recovery With the announcement of OTVault, new online data storage, businesses can take an easy first step towards disaster recovery by backing up their data online to one of Online Tech’s SAS 70 certified data centers. Backups at many businesses are often poorly managed – inconsistent backup schedules or leaving the backup data on site are just some of the problems that can be overcome by automating electronic backups to online data storage. OTVault lets businesses map the online storage to their in house servers as a drive and use their current backup software to write backups and critical data at Online Tech’s SAS70 certified data centers. OTVault starts at $199 for 100 GB of online data storage and only $99 for each additional 100 GB. More on OTVault online data storage.
Presentation to the Great Lakes Business Recovery Group On November 11, 2008, Mike Klein, President of Online Tech presented a “Framework for Data Center Disaster Recovery” to the Great Lakes Business Recovery Group. The Disaster Recovery presentation discussed how mass digitization is shifting the business world from relying on physical assets to relying on electronic assets. As data protection evolved in the past from data closets to in-house data centers the same focus on data protection is now moving focus to high availability data centers and disaster recovery across multiple data centers. In his presentation, Klein offered three different frameworks for data center delivery, disaster prevention and disaster recovery. See Also Online Tech Presentation on Disaster Recovery Data Center Disaster Recovery Presentation
Business Impact and Response Times are Key Factors in How You Plan for Disaster Recovery How many data centers are needed to ensure proper disaster recovery? Today’s economy is exerting pressure on IT data center operations in two directions: For those with many data centers the pressure is to consolidate for increased efficiency and lower costs. For those with just one, or maybe two data centers, attention has been focused on ensuring disaster preparedness, especially in light of the damage caused by natural and human made disasters over the past decade The answer to the “how many” question is never simple. And yes, I am going to say it: “It depends.” So what does it depend on? The number of data centers that you need for disaster recovery depends on two principal decisions that you must make. The first decision applies to all IT organizations and is dependent upon the whole business completing a business impact analysis (BIA). The BIA will dictate the recovery time and point objectives that must be met for the business to survive a disaster. A commonly made mistake is that business units within the organization seek aggressive recovery objectives to avoid inconvenience to their daily…
Attendees listened to Disaster Recovery Experts OnlineTech’s Disaster Recovery Seminar in our Michigan Data Center today was well received. Over 80 attendees got to listen to: Rod Smith, Principal at UHY Advisors MI and the leader of the firm’s Sarbanes-Oxley practice discussed how to put together your Disaster Recovery Plan. Scott Vince, Founder of Capricorn Diversified Services and Gordon Konz, Storage Expert from Dell presented Disaster Recovery using VMware and SAN architecture. Christopher Balk from Coretek discussed managing IT infrastructure with Microsoft tools. Adam Goslin, VP of IT for Osiris Innovations Group, discussed how Osiris addressed their need for a secure, scalable high availability data centers for both production and disaster recovery. Finally, Mike Klein, President and COO of OnlineTech presented frameworks for data centers, disaster prevention and disaster recovery.
Surviving an IT Disaster – Interesting Government Statistics At least one in four businesses never reopen after a disaster – according to www.ready.gov. See Also Ready.gov link At least One in four businesses never reopen after a disaster
Location is a key factor in selecting a Michigan data center When considering a data center the real estate adage “location, location, location” certainly plays an important factor. Many IT executives want a Michigan data center that is within reasonable distance from the office so they are able to conveniently attend to their colocation. Convenient traveling is not the only reason location has a major influence on choosing a Michigan data center, however. Finding a Michigan data center that utilizes a separate power grid than your primary data center is also important. As well, choosing a data center that resides in a separate geographic location is also important. Online Technologies’ three Michigan data centers meet all of the necessary location demands. Online Tech offers two Michigan data centers serving Midwest and the Great Lakes region. With Michigan data centers located in Ann Arbor and Flint, Online Tech’s facilities are conveniently located close to many major Michigan cities, such as Detroit, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and obviously, Ann Arbor and Flint. In addition to residing in convenient locations, Each Online Tech Michigan data center resides in a separate power grid. While the Ann Arbor data center utilizes power from Detroit Edison’s…
Online Tech Announces Disaster Recovery Seminar for October 16th ANN ARBOR, Michigan—Online Tech, a managed data center operator, announces a free educational seminar on disaster recovery and electronic backup for CIOs and IT Managers. Online Tech has partnered with UHY Advisors, Coretek Services, and Capricorn Diversified Systems, Inc. to deliver the seminar. The seminar will run from 10AM to 1PM on October 16th, 2008 and will include lunch. Disaster recovery has become a hot topic in the IT world. A University of Texas study found that 43% of companies experiencing a catastrophic data loss never recover and over half of them go out of business within two years. The Disaster Recovery seminar will cover key issues for companies to consider when they design their DR strategy. The key note speaker for the event will be Adam Goslin, Vice President of Information Technology at Osiris Innovations Group. Osiris is a leading on-demand procurement services company based in Michigan. Adam will discuss Osiris’s approach to delivering a secure and scalable disaster recovery solution with their Software-as-a-Service model where downtime isn’t an option. Other speakers at the seminar include: – Rod Smith, Principal at UHY, who will be presenting an approach to disaster recovery planning; – Yan…