Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Workbook: All about Business Continuity and DR

Transcription

1 Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Workbook: All about Business Continuity and DR

2 Introduction This is the place to start if you are only somewhat familiar with disaster recovery, information availability, and business continuity. This introductory workbook gives you a quick understanding of the building blocks of keeping your business protected, recovering quickly and sustaining a resilient organization. Written in a Q&A style, you will learn the answers to the five most critical DR questions and how to develop a data protection and disaster recovery plan. 1 visionsolutions.com

3 Defining Your Business Continuity and DR Needs What is availability? Most organizations define availability somewhere along a continuum between multiple hours of downtime with significant data loss to real-time 24/7 uptime with zero data loss. Your definition depends on your business needs, your data and applications requirements and your organizational structure. The goal, however, should be to prevent the inevitable system downtime from affecting business uptime. What is the difference between disaster recovery, high availability, continuous operations, continuous availability and business continuity? Disaster Recovery is the ability to handle site failures with minimal disruption to the business. Information Availability Continuum to Business Continuity High Availability (HA) is the ability to handle application failures with minimal disruptions to the business. It is focused on continuous operations and recovery of server failures eliminating both planned and unplanned downtime. Level of Enterprise Protection Disaster Recovery High Availability Continuous Operations Continuous Availability Days Hours Minutes Functionality/Cost/Recovery Time Objective - RTO Continuous Operations (CO) is the ability to perform routine application and server maintenance and backups with Data-Centric Application-Centric minimal disruption to the supported business function. Focused solely on eliminating downtime associated with planned events. Continuous Availability (CA) means the continuous availability of critical business functions. It is focused on eliminating planned and unplanned downtime as well as server, site and enterprise protection. Business Continuity is focused not only on eliminating the risks of downtime to your IT assets, it includes the people and processes to handle an unplanned event that affects the entire business or a region in which the business operates. Business continuity includes IT functions as well as the pre-arranged processes for alerting employees and customers to a disaster, the preparation and testing of disaster preparedness plans and the auditing of those processes to ensure effectiveness. 2 visionsolutions.com

4 What is information availability? Information availability encompasses an end-to-end view of a computing environment including applications, data, servers, operating systems, processes and infrastructure to ensure consistent, predictable access to any data or any applications wherever, whenever and however users require them. Information availability does not mean keeping systems available 100 percent of the time. For example, a business that does not need its systems between midnight and 6 a.m. will not be concerned about downtime during those hours. However, achieving the level of optimum information availability that s right for your business means that data and applications identified as vital will be available during pre-specified critical hours which may mean 24/7, 24/5, 20/7, 12/6 or any combination of hours and workdays that fit your business objectives. What is the difference between reliability and availability? Availability Dependencies AVAILABILITY Planned Downtime Application Upgrades Hardware Upgrades Database Reorganization Network Reconfiguration Unplanned Downtime Power Outage Communication Lines Down Operator Error Server Hardware Damage (Flood, Fire, Lightening, etc.) Operating System Instability Memory Leaks Resource Conflicts RELIABILITY Application Instability Server Hardware Failure (MTBF) Processors DASD Displays Routers It is important to note that reliability and availability are not synonymous. Reliability refers to the mean time between failure (MTBF) of a hardware component. Availability means that data and applications are accessible by users when needed, without regard to what might cause their inaccessibility. Reliability is, therefore, a component of availability, but, since most hardware is now very reliable, it may be less of a concern than other issues. Addressing availability issues implies also addressing reliability issues, but only as a subset of the bigger picture. Significantly improving hardware and software reliability will only slightly decrease the total number of hours of downtime over the course of a year because, compared to other factors such as hardware, software and database maintenance, unreliable systems are responsible for only a small percentage of downtime. Significantly improving availability is possible only by addressing all causes of unavailability, including, but not exclusively, reliability. 3 visionsolutions.com

5 What is information availability planning? Information availability planning takes a systematic, holistic view of the entire enterprise information infrastructure. The plan is designed to evaluate availability vulnerabilities, assess the magnitude and probability of the threats, and identify and implement solutions that provide a favorable return on investment. Why systematic? Because in any business today especially for SMBs it is no longer acceptable or good enough for only one application to be continuously available or to be protected by a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. You must consider the data and the networks that integrate with this application and that the application depends on. Why holistic? Because the failure of any one element may make the whole environment unavailable. Therefore, focusing on a single component, such as just the disk drives, power supply or processors, will only marginally improve availability. For example, applications will not work without data and objects and vice versa. Your planning process should look at all data and all applications across the enterprise to determine your systemwide availability requirements. In this context, data does not mean just business data. It includes all of the security, middleware staging areas, data queues and other system data required to keep applications running according to specifications. Should I worry more about data or applications? Some managers worry most about losing data. Others, while still wanting to protect data, lose more sleep over application downtime. Your specific requirements will be determined by your business strategies and objectives. For example, an internet-based retailer will probably be unwilling to lose any data as that can mean lost sales and significant customer hostility. While a vast majority of organizations depend on tape backups to protect their data, these backups cannot recover data that was lost between saves (orphan data). A logistics company or a manufacturer running three shifts and a highly computerized shop floor will be more concerned about losing access to applications. What is downtime? Downtime is defined as any interruption in your IT processes when users cannot use or access data, applications or networks. There are two types of downtime. Unplanned downtime Unpredictable events that cause an outage; usually related to power, natural disaster or human error. Unplanned downtime typically represents less than 5 percent of all downtime. Planned downtime Planned downtime occurs when you purposely bring systems, databases, applications or networks down for maintenance or backup activities, including daily/weekly saves, batch jobs, database reorganizations, application and system upgrades, system maintenance, performance tuning and other activities. The majority of downtime that a typical user will experience is planned downtime. With infrastructure and server reliability improvements occurring on a regular basis, the likelihood that a server will fail is decreasing over time. 4 visionsolutions.com

6 What are the most common downtime challenges to information availability? Application and Database Backups One of the challenges in today s IT community is to make application and server backups on a regular basis. Without backups, the business is exposed due to the inability to recover the business. Also, IT departments are faced with the problem of making multiple types of backups. A large string of backups can create problems when it comes time to recover from the backup tapes. Some exposures are present at the time of recovery. For example, if one set of tapes is bad, the recovery can only go as far as the last good set of tapes. The main purpose for making backups is to be able to recover. If the backups are complex and unreliable, it defeats the purpose of the making the backups at all. Managing these backups usually requires downtime unless save-whileactive technology is used. While this helps ease the requirement for the backup process, the objects on the tapes are not necessarily in sync. For example, a save of a complete library may not yield a complete backup because object locks could not be obtained. Sources of Unplanned Downtime: Disasters Natural Disasters Man-Made Disasters Wildfires Home & Building Fires Floods & Flash Floods Hazardous Materials Accidents Hurricanes Terrorism Tornadoes Aviation Accidents Thunderstorms & Lightening Ship/Maritime Accidents Snow, Ice & Winter Storms Train/Railroad Accidents Heatwave & Drought Riots/Civil Unrest Landslides & Mudflows Bridge Collapses Tsunamis & Other Tidal Action Dam Breaks Volcanoes Nuclear/Radiological Accidents Earthquakes Also, backups tend to be system focused. If a server fails, the entire server and its applications must be recovered simultaneously regardless of whether the application is critical to the business or not. Application and Server Maintenance Maintaining server and application PTF or release levels is important to maintaining a well-tuned IT environment. Many times, applying application and server modifications is put on the back burner until time can be scheduled to perform the maintenance. Also, the maintenance often occurs on weekend or holidays, which limits access to vendor support and entails overtime expenses. Being able to stay current on releases is important to getting the best support from OS and application vendors. In the same vein, it is also vital that a business perform routine server and application maintenance to maintain the performance of a server. Database reorganizations, IPL s and other routines must be executed on a regular basis. While the latest OS releases help reduce the need for frequent maintenance, it can t be altogether avoided. Unfortunately, performing application and server maintenance requires downtime, which is painful to the business. 5 visionsolutions.com

7 Why is planned downtime a bigger challenge to an IT department? Because it happens so frequently. While unplanned events tend to attract the most attention, planned downtime actually poses a bigger challenge to business availability. Routine daily/weekly maintenance to databases, applications or systems, lead to interrupted services. Studies show that system upgrades, performance tuning and batch jobs create more than percent of downtime (95+ percent on IBM Power Systems servers). How do I know I am at risk from unplanned interruptions/downtime? Why should I be concerned? Although companies must be concerned about natural disasters, the inherent daily threat posed by application problems and human error should be your primary concern in developing a disaster recovery strategy that will enable your business to continue doing business even in the event of application failure. For example, a host of IT, business and governmental concerns compounds the risks from application downtime. Do you face any of these challenges? The need to retain, protect and audit , financial and other records under regulatory compliance mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley, the USA Patriot Act, and others across the globe. The acceleration of security risks from both inside and outside the business including viruses, worms, hacker attacks and industrial espionage. Distributed applications that are accessed, maintained and updated by different classes of users and business partners. Multiple platform IT environments in which applications operate interdependently to accomplish business critical business tasks. Fewer IT personnel and labor hours available to maintain and troubleshoot increasingly complex and data intensive IT environments. How do I know if downtime may be a threat to my IT environment and business? Many organizations may believe that they remain unaffected by downtime issues. After all, few users complain; customers seem happy. Some important signals, however, may indicate that your current situation or availability solution may need re-evaluation. Shrinking Backup Windows ebusiness and supply-chain processes put the squeeze on backup windows. IT analysts, such as Gartner, report a 66 percent per year decline in available timeframes needed for quality backups. And what about the time it takes to restore this data? Even if the unplanned outage is relatively brief say 24 hours your recovery strategy must consider the additional time (downtime) that it would take to recover so much data. Expanded Internet Dependence As business exploits the internet to improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs, dependence on internet-enabled access grows exponentially. When is integrated into business functions to improve customer communications, dependence becomes even greater. 6 visionsolutions.com

8 W H I T E P A P E R Globalized Computing Access to critical data from anywhere in the world improves collaboration and enables faster, more informed decisions, while mobile workforces, information and applications. Distributed Applications New applications are now running across multiple servers simultaneously, enabling them to capitalize on each server s varying strengths; however, should one server fail, the entire critical application may go down. Server Consolidation Ever-popular server, storage and data center consolidation projects drive down IT and application costs but create higher risks that unplanned or planned downtime will adversely impact the business. 7 v i s i o n s o l u t i ons.co m

9 Summary You should have an understanding of the basic ideas and issues involved in disaster recovery, business continuity and information availability. The next step is to determine workbooks in this series, available online at Vision Solutions DR Center. There you will solutions and links to helpful websites on the topic. About Vision Solutions With over 25,000 customers globally, Vision Solutions is one of the industry s largest providers of business continuity and information availability solutions for IBM i, Windows, Linux, AIX, and Cloud environments. Vision s trusted MIMIX, itera and Double-Take brands keep business-critical information continuously protected and available. With an emphasis on affordability and ease-of-use, Vision products and services help customers achieve their IT compliance and customer satisfaction. Vision Solutions also offers the tools and competency needed to migrate complex, multi-layered computing environments. These solutions are designed to eliminate the strain on resources, dramatically reduce server downtime, and offset the risks associated with migrations. Regardless of OS or hypervisor, Vision Solutions offers the technology needed to make every migration a success. Vision Solutions oversees a global partner network that includes IBM, HP, Microsoft, VMware, DellTM and hundreds of resellers and system integrators. Privately held by Thoma Bravo, Inc., Vision Solutions is headquartered in Irvine, California with development, support and sales For more information call: (toll-free U.S. and Canada) or visit visionsolutions.com. Facebook: Twitter: YouTube: Vision Solutions Blog: Barranca Parkway Irvine, CA visionsolutions.com Copyright 2013, Vision Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. IBM and System i are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. WP_VS_IntroDR_WBK1_E_0811