The process, policies and procedures that are related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure which are vital to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster. Disaster recovery focuses on the IT or technology systems that support business functions, as opposed to business continuity, which involves planning for keeping all aspects of a business functioning in the midst of disruptive events.
Prior to selecting a disaster recovery strategy, a disaster recovery planner first refers to their organization’s business continuity plan which should indicate the key metrics of recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) for various business processes.
Unitrends Recovery Appliance : BareMetal data protection: BareMetal is a technology designed to dramatically decrease the time and effort required to restore a computer to its original state in the event of a system failure. BareMetal protects not only the typical files and data of the user but also the operating system and applications.
Nexsan Assureon: Two copies of all files, along with their fingerprints, are stored on separate RAID disk sets. Two Assureon systems can be replicated to each other to protect against a site failure. Files are continually verified against their fingerprint, automatically repaired by their copies, and safeguarded by RAID disk arrays to ensure the utmost file protection and integrity. Native active/active replication protects against site disasters with automatic failover, while delivering increased performance over active/passive systems.
Nimble Storage systems can efficiently replicate volumes to another array at a recovery site by transferring changed blocks of compressed snapshot data without additional hardware or software licenses. This means disaster recovery is fast, affordable, and easy to manage. Nimble Storage InfoSight not only helps you make sure that replication is operating as expected across sites, but also helps you plan for replication bandwidth as well.
Nexsan NST series, there is no performance penalty for taking snapshots. Up to 2048 snapshots are supported. Storage does not need to be reserved to hold snapshot data. The management GUI makes it easy to setup and manage snapshot creation and deletion schedules. Snapshots are mountable for testing or other purposes. Granularity is per pool, per share, or LUN.
Some of the most common strategies for data protection include:
backups made to tape and sent off-site at regular intervals
backups made to disk on-site and automatically copied to off-site disk, or made directly to off-site disk
replication of data to an off-site location, which overcomes the need to restore the data (only the systems then need to be restored or synchronized), often making use of storage area network (SAN) technology
Hybrid Cloud solutions that replicate both on-site and to off-site data centers. These solutions provide the ability to instantly fail-over to local on-site hardware, but in the event of a physical disaster, servers can be brought up in the cloud data centers as well.
the use of high availability systems which keep both the data and system replicated off-site, enabling continuous access to systems and data, even after a disaster
In many cases, an organization may elect to use an outsourced disaster recovery provider to provide a stand-by site and systems rather than using their own remote facilities, increasingly via cloud computing.
In addition to preparing for the need to recover systems, organizations also implement precautionary measures with the objective of preventing a disaster in the first place. These may include:
local mirrors of systems and/or data and use of disk protection technology such as RAID
surge protectors — to minimize the effect of power surges on delicate electronic equipment
use of an UPS and/or backup generator to keep systems going in the event of a power failure
fire prevention/mitigation systems such as alarms and fire extinguishers
