Natural Disaster and Your Data Backup

             Natural Disaster and Your Data Backup

 

As the things are not certain and there are rapid changes in the climate as well Hence in this scenario we can’t say about tomorrow Hence it becomes necessary to have disaster data plan in place against natural disaster.’

 

Are we still follows the traditional approach . As many research reveal that half of all organizations could not survive a disaster event. Research shows that many of the organization do not test the backup they have taken. We can not imagine the cost of loss of the data due to this type of care less.

 

What can be Done for the Protection of the Data

 

1.   Redundancy of Backup Data

2.   Having a Disaster recovery Site

3.   Keep the backup offsite also

 

Redundancy of Backup Data

We should always maintain the redundancy. We always  have more then one copy of the backup in different type of media . In case if one copy of backup get corrupted we can use the second copy of backup available.

Having a Disaster recovery Site

 

Most of the Companies are still not having the disaster recovery site. Disaster recovery site is a secondary location of a Company’s Network and server Setup same as Primary site and this can be used in case of any disaster happened to the Primary Site. Suppose in case of Natural Disaster , your Primary site fails to work then you have to wait till it get normal but if you have the Disaster Recovery Site then without any interruption you can start the work normally and meanwhile you can recover your primary site also. For the Disaster Recovery site Planning is necessary and  you should plan it by keep the need of organization in mind like time, budget, Location and  also must include the process of automatic schedule of sync between Primary and Disaster recovery site.

 

Type of Disaster Recovery Site: (source: http://www.nakavio.com)

 

There are three types of backup sites: cold sites, warm sites, and hot sites. Let’s look at what each of the sites represents and what differentiates them from one another.

 

Cold site

 

A cold site is a backup facility with little  or no hardware equipment installed. A cold site is essentially an office space with basic utilities such as power, cooling system, air conditioning, and communication equipment, etc. A cold site is the most cost-effective option among the three disaster recovery sites. However, due to the fact that a cold site doesn’t have any pre-installed equipment, it takes a lot of time to properly set it up so as to fully resume business operations. In case of a disaster, an organization would require help from IT personnel to migrate necessary servers and make them functional in order to take on the workload of the primary site.

 

Hot site

 

A hot site is a backup facility which represents a mirrored copy of the primary production center. A hot site is equipped with all the necessary hardware, software, and network connectivity, which allows you to perform near real-time backup or replication of the critical data. This way the production workload can be failed over to a DR site in a few minutes or hours, thus ensuring minimal downtime and zero data loss. A hot site is expected to be always online and running without disruption so as to ensure data synchronization between the sites.

A hot site is the most expensive option among the three. Thus, it is important to ensure that this type of a DR site is located far enough from the production center. This way you can decrease the possibility of a hot site being affected by the same disaster as the primary site.

 

Warm site

 

A warm site is considered the middle ground between the cold site and the hot site. A warm site is a backup facility that has the network connectivity and the necessary hardware equipment already pre-installed. However, a warm site cannot perform on the same level as the  production center because they are not equipped in the same way. Therefore, a warm site has less operational capacity than the primary site. Moreover, data synchronization between the primary and the secondary sites is performed daily or weekly, which can result in minor data loss. A warm site is perfect for organizations which operate with less critical data and can tolerate a short period of downtime. This type of a DR site is the second most expensive option.