Everyone needs one, most people have one, but there’s a problem. Actually, two problems. First, traditional recovery solutions are generally not all that reliable. Worse still, they require expensive hardware duplication at designated recovery sites, use processes that are manual, complex and slow, and have a high rate of failure due to hardware dependencies and untested failover processes.
Organizations typically rely on traditional tape backup to guard against this eventuality. More comprehensive disaster recovery solutions that automatically maintain up-to-date copies of data at a remote location are desirable, but here again are almost always unaffordable with traditional/dedicated technologies.
Naturally, we have the solution.
DR plan choices
In preparing for the unexpected, most companies put specific disaster recovery plans in place. Without planning, recovering from a disaster can be incredibly costly and complex. The following three plans offer a turnkey solution to DR:
| 3 Levels of Disaster Recovery | |
|---|---|
| Bronze DR |
Replication of all your company's data and server states to a secondary Data Center. Frequency of data replication can be weekly, daily, every 4 hours or hourly. Return to Operations (RTO) within 7 days. |
| Silver DR |
Replication of all your company's data and server states to a secondary Data Center with Standby Servers on reserve, ready to go into production in the event of a disaster. Frequency of data replication can be daily, every 4 hours, or hourly. Return to Operations (RTO) within 48 hours. |
| Gold DR |
This is the highest DR configuration available - a mirror instance of all company infrastructure at secondary Data Center. All servers are live and running, production-ready at the switch of lever (controlled within the Portal), monitored by our Network Operations Department. Frequency of data replication is hourly, live for database and mail servers. Return to Operations (RTO) near immediate. |
DR Economics
In choosing your disaster recovery plan, there are two important issues: 1) In the event of a disaster, how quickly do you need to return to full operations? 2) How much work can you afford to lose in a recovery? An hour's worth? A day? A week?
Disaster recovery planning is famously expensive. While our fees are not in the bottom third of the industry, and can not be, given the quality of our infrastructure, Data Centers, and backup and replication technology, you’ll find that we are a good value. Unlike some companies, moving from Bronze to Silver or Silver to Gold is neither an exponential jump, nor an upgrade that doubles price.
Documentation and testing
This is a good
place to ask
any provider
lots of
questions.
Our Disaster Recovery experts will work with you to develop a customized plan, which includes: establishing and documenting an auditable disaster recovery plan, testing the plan with prescribed regularity (monthly, quarterly, yearly), and specifying other variables including your acceptable return-to-operation time and potential for data loss in worst-case scenarios.
