Disaster Recovery Planning and Network Services Continuity
Shaun Hummel asked:
Disaster recovery planning (DRP) starts with a discussion that involves key management employees. It is important to get their support with any disaster recovery initiative. Explain what disaster recovery is and why it is required for business continuity, cost reduction, generating revenue and improving productivity. Disaster scenarios such as fire, flood, earthquake, cold weather and employee sabotage should be discussed. Alternate vendors should be discussed as well as a potential issue with business continuity.
Risk Assessment
The Risk Assessment is a ” what if analysis ” that describes the amount of risk associated with the current state of the network. The following are some things to consider before any disaster recovery strategy formulation.
• Average cost per/minute that your network is unavailable.
• Cost of replacing servers, applications, circuits and devices.
• What if any disaster recovery plan exists and how extensive it is.
• Have alternate vendors been identified should primary vendors have their own disaster recovery problems.
Disaster Recovery Strategy
The disaster recovery strategy describes operational changes, design changes and failover strategies for business continuity. An action plan document is created that describes all those strategies and a detailed escalation procedure should the network become unavailable. It should document employees, responsibilities, time frames, event sequence, vendors and processes.
The following describes recommended operational changes:
1. Network Documentation
Automate the network documentation process. It is difficult to restore a network without having current documentation of the network before it became unavailable. Running a network assessment will collect some information however you need application and device configurations as well. Find a tool that will automate this process!
Document these items:
• Current Topology
• Infrastructure
• Security Policies
• Management Strategy
• Application Configurations, Versions and Patches
• Device Configurations, IOS Versions and Firmware
2. Regular Backups rotated off-site and tested for data integrity
The following list describes recommended design changes:
Review and modify design, infrastructure, configuration, security and management for improved network resiliency and availability. It is my contention that running a network assessment is an effective strategy for determining what changes should be made to your network. The argument could be made that all assessment groups have some affect on network availability and resiliency. The availability assessment will collect most of the key information however the security assessment must be considered since problems with company security will expose your network to attacks. When your network is being attacked it isn’t available!
Management strategy assessments are key as well since the absence of effective management policies and applications will create a tenuous situation. For instance without any change management policies you will have employees changing application and device configurations (assuming they have security authorization) without prior approval and at any time of the day. The configuration change doesn’t work as expected and it is 10 am while employees are starting their day. Guess what, your day just got longer. Pro-Active fault and performance monitoring strategies will indicate when a device or server is not operational or near capacity. Those situations will obviously affect network availability. The performance assessment will describe how well the network is performing and whether there are any capacity issues and what offices are affected. The infrastructure assessment will focus on issues such as media mismatches, switch port capacity, IOS version problems, router memory shortages, application software versions and protocols. Facilities are considered with an availability assessment and focus on rack space, temperature controls, power availability and raised floors.
Select Failover Strategies
1. On-Line data synchronization between the production Data Center and a remote Data Center facility. The cutover or convergence time should be transparent to employees and all current data would be available. This requires the cost of a remote facility with routers, switches and matching servers and applications to synchronize the offices. Cisco distributed director technology can be utilized to configure both Data Centers for concurrent operation if that is required.
2. Configure the distributed director to redirect sessions to the alternate Data Center once a certain percentage of TCP sessions were running at the primary Data Center. It is still a good idea to consider standby sites as described below since both on-line Data Centers could be unavailable.
3. Configure a 48 hour standby site for the company which is a remote facility that has all the equipment necessary for restoring a specified service level within 48 hours. This is a temporary strategy for continuing network service for a short time frame before the problems are fixed or cutover to a 10 day site. This can be provisioned by company employees or contracted to a third party DRP vendor.
4. Configure a 10 day standby site for the company which is a remote facility that has all the equipment necessary for restoring all specified services within 10 days. This would be utilized in a situation where restoration of Data Center services would require months. This can be provisioned by company employees or contracted to a third party DRP vendor.
Contingency Testing
Test your disaster recovery (business continuity) strategy utilizing the action plan document from the strategy phase. There should be a meeting with specific employees and vendors to discuss responsibilities, time frames, test event sequence and processes. The company strategy and action plan should be changed as problems are identified from the testing phase or company requirements change. Plan on regular testing of the disaster recovery plan 3 – 4 times per year.
Recommendations
The results from contingency testing will be utilized to make sound recommendations for improving the disaster recovery strategy and the testing process. The complexity of your organization will affect how difficult it is to build a workable disaster recovery plan. The recommendations will streamline your DRP and ensure it works when it is required. The on demand circuit is homed to the remote DR facility router where it converges with the company network and employees can utilize the mainframe applications. The DR mainframe should be synchronized with the company mainframe for transactions during that period before service is restored.
10 steps to becoming a millionaire
Disaster recovery planning (DRP) starts with a discussion that involves key management employees. It is important to get their support with any disaster recovery initiative. Explain what disaster recovery is and why it is required for business continuity, cost reduction, generating revenue and improving productivity. Disaster scenarios such as fire, flood, earthquake, cold weather and employee sabotage should be discussed. Alternate vendors should be discussed as well as a potential issue with business continuity.
Risk Assessment
The Risk Assessment is a ” what if analysis ” that describes the amount of risk associated with the current state of the network. The following are some things to consider before any disaster recovery strategy formulation.
• Average cost per/minute that your network is unavailable.
• Cost of replacing servers, applications, circuits and devices.
• What if any disaster recovery plan exists and how extensive it is.
• Have alternate vendors been identified should primary vendors have their own disaster recovery problems.
Disaster Recovery Strategy
The disaster recovery strategy describes operational changes, design changes and failover strategies for business continuity. An action plan document is created that describes all those strategies and a detailed escalation procedure should the network become unavailable. It should document employees, responsibilities, time frames, event sequence, vendors and processes.
The following describes recommended operational changes:
1. Network Documentation
Automate the network documentation process. It is difficult to restore a network without having current documentation of the network before it became unavailable. Running a network assessment will collect some information however you need application and device configurations as well. Find a tool that will automate this process!
Document these items:
• Current Topology
• Infrastructure
• Security Policies
• Management Strategy
• Application Configurations, Versions and Patches
• Device Configurations, IOS Versions and Firmware
2. Regular Backups rotated off-site and tested for data integrity
The following list describes recommended design changes:
Review and modify design, infrastructure, configuration, security and management for improved network resiliency and availability. It is my contention that running a network assessment is an effective strategy for determining what changes should be made to your network. The argument could be made that all assessment groups have some affect on network availability and resiliency. The availability assessment will collect most of the key information however the security assessment must be considered since problems with company security will expose your network to attacks. When your network is being attacked it isn’t available!
Management strategy assessments are key as well since the absence of effective management policies and applications will create a tenuous situation. For instance without any change management policies you will have employees changing application and device configurations (assuming they have security authorization) without prior approval and at any time of the day. The configuration change doesn’t work as expected and it is 10 am while employees are starting their day. Guess what, your day just got longer. Pro-Active fault and performance monitoring strategies will indicate when a device or server is not operational or near capacity. Those situations will obviously affect network availability. The performance assessment will describe how well the network is performing and whether there are any capacity issues and what offices are affected. The infrastructure assessment will focus on issues such as media mismatches, switch port capacity, IOS version problems, router memory shortages, application software versions and protocols. Facilities are considered with an availability assessment and focus on rack space, temperature controls, power availability and raised floors.
Select Failover Strategies
1. On-Line data synchronization between the production Data Center and a remote Data Center facility. The cutover or convergence time should be transparent to employees and all current data would be available. This requires the cost of a remote facility with routers, switches and matching servers and applications to synchronize the offices. Cisco distributed director technology can be utilized to configure both Data Centers for concurrent operation if that is required.
2. Configure the distributed director to redirect sessions to the alternate Data Center once a certain percentage of TCP sessions were running at the primary Data Center. It is still a good idea to consider standby sites as described below since both on-line Data Centers could be unavailable.
3. Configure a 48 hour standby site for the company which is a remote facility that has all the equipment necessary for restoring a specified service level within 48 hours. This is a temporary strategy for continuing network service for a short time frame before the problems are fixed or cutover to a 10 day site. This can be provisioned by company employees or contracted to a third party DRP vendor.
4. Configure a 10 day standby site for the company which is a remote facility that has all the equipment necessary for restoring all specified services within 10 days. This would be utilized in a situation where restoration of Data Center services would require months. This can be provisioned by company employees or contracted to a third party DRP vendor.
Contingency Testing
Test your disaster recovery (business continuity) strategy utilizing the action plan document from the strategy phase. There should be a meeting with specific employees and vendors to discuss responsibilities, time frames, test event sequence and processes. The company strategy and action plan should be changed as problems are identified from the testing phase or company requirements change. Plan on regular testing of the disaster recovery plan 3 – 4 times per year.
Recommendations
The results from contingency testing will be utilized to make sound recommendations for improving the disaster recovery strategy and the testing process. The complexity of your organization will affect how difficult it is to build a workable disaster recovery plan. The recommendations will streamline your DRP and ensure it works when it is required. The on demand circuit is homed to the remote DR facility router where it converges with the company network and employees can utilize the mainframe applications. The DR mainframe should be synchronized with the company mainframe for transactions during that period before service is restored.
10 steps to becoming a millionaire
Disaster Management Communications
Simone Icough asked:
Communication media is growing by leaps and bounds as newer technological advancement has enabled and enhanced the way people communicate in 2009.
The world is not a very safe place to live in these days as disaster and terrorism can strike at any moment. Communication is the only relief as times of disaster and hence the need for a efficient disaster management system becomes imperative in public places and even in business establishments and important commercial joints where people move around in large numbers. Disaster might strike in the form of natural calamities, terrorist’s attacks and accidents. Thus an efficient disaster management system which will work in adverse conditions is needed.
In times of natural calamity like floods, storms or fire the usual mode of communication like phone, mobile etc might not work or might be lost in the calamity. The society at large must be well protected and the protection given by the police or disaster management forces must be instant and immediate. Thus the disaster management crew must be well trained and equipped with the best appliances which might help them to communicate the condition they are in and the status of the calamity in the region they work for.
Wireless communication modules are popular these days as they use satellite signals for communication and we would recommend any of the Motorola VHF models that are portable for local communications and Codan NGT SRx for the long distance communications. We would also recommend a Portable Repeater system VHF that can be used from a vehicle and would provide communications around the area of the disaster.
Reliability is what these disaster management communication systems must focus on as the need for these systems might be more in remote parts and some time even inaccessible areas like deep seas and mountain tops. We see so many people getting lost while trekking in forests or mountains. Many accidents occur during avalanche and landslides. So a communication system must be reliable and must be in working condition at all times. Thus wide area network with satellite signals is usually recommended. Many new discoveries and easy to use communication gadgets are introduced from time to time.
Codan Communications
Satellite radio plays an important role in disaster management. Arial snap shots from the satellites also reveal the severity of the disaster and they can almost penetrate closer to any region to get a good view of that place. Communication has definitely made this world as a global village wherein we can see the storm ravaging in the US live on our television sets. Our lives are well protected by the meteorically departments forecast of possible calamities. The internet technology helps us to keep in close touch with our loved ones living miles apart. The moment an accident occurs to someone close to us, we are informed immediately.
The status of the space ship or the rocket launcher is known immediately. We are able to keep track of the mission we had sent to the planet Mars many years ago. We get snap shots of it’s surface and other planets. We are warned about a comet coming in high speed to bang against our earth. So you see communication is what has made this information possible. An efficient disaster management system can divert or stop much loss of lives or property.
10 steps to becoming a millionaire
Communication media is growing by leaps and bounds as newer technological advancement has enabled and enhanced the way people communicate in 2009.
The world is not a very safe place to live in these days as disaster and terrorism can strike at any moment. Communication is the only relief as times of disaster and hence the need for a efficient disaster management system becomes imperative in public places and even in business establishments and important commercial joints where people move around in large numbers. Disaster might strike in the form of natural calamities, terrorist’s attacks and accidents. Thus an efficient disaster management system which will work in adverse conditions is needed.
In times of natural calamity like floods, storms or fire the usual mode of communication like phone, mobile etc might not work or might be lost in the calamity. The society at large must be well protected and the protection given by the police or disaster management forces must be instant and immediate. Thus the disaster management crew must be well trained and equipped with the best appliances which might help them to communicate the condition they are in and the status of the calamity in the region they work for.
Wireless communication modules are popular these days as they use satellite signals for communication and we would recommend any of the Motorola VHF models that are portable for local communications and Codan NGT SRx for the long distance communications. We would also recommend a Portable Repeater system VHF that can be used from a vehicle and would provide communications around the area of the disaster.
Reliability is what these disaster management communication systems must focus on as the need for these systems might be more in remote parts and some time even inaccessible areas like deep seas and mountain tops. We see so many people getting lost while trekking in forests or mountains. Many accidents occur during avalanche and landslides. So a communication system must be reliable and must be in working condition at all times. Thus wide area network with satellite signals is usually recommended. Many new discoveries and easy to use communication gadgets are introduced from time to time.
Codan Communications
Satellite radio plays an important role in disaster management. Arial snap shots from the satellites also reveal the severity of the disaster and they can almost penetrate closer to any region to get a good view of that place. Communication has definitely made this world as a global village wherein we can see the storm ravaging in the US live on our television sets. Our lives are well protected by the meteorically departments forecast of possible calamities. The internet technology helps us to keep in close touch with our loved ones living miles apart. The moment an accident occurs to someone close to us, we are informed immediately.
The status of the space ship or the rocket launcher is known immediately. We are able to keep track of the mission we had sent to the planet Mars many years ago. We get snap shots of it’s surface and other planets. We are warned about a comet coming in high speed to bang against our earth. So you see communication is what has made this information possible. An efficient disaster management system can divert or stop much loss of lives or property.
10 steps to becoming a millionaire
Top Five Business Predictions For 2010
Lesley Charalambides asked:
One thing I hate about this time of year are all the articles giving a roundup of the events of the year and making predictions for the year ahead. I don’t need a roundup. I was there. As for predictions, the next person who tells me the economy is likely to improve and there will be a growth in social networking is likely to get the a rude response. It’s not a prediction to state the obvious. The way the economy has been, up actually seems more likely than down. That’s the way most things go when they’ve hit the bottom. Having said that, here is my (small) set of predictions for 2010.
1. The number of small businesses will grow quickly. As people are laid off from their jobs and can’t find another they will begin to work for themselves. The ability to learn new skills quickly will become more important than knowledge in any one area.
2. Companies who sell goods and services to this market will do well. Companies small enough to change and target this market will also do well.
3. New tools will be built around the popular social networks, such as twitter, which will allow users to track and measure the effectiveness of their ‘tweets’. The social networking platforms will become even more integrated and ease of use will be prized. Twitter will be more successful than Facebook.
4. Networking groups, on and offline, will prosper as the new small business owners look to other small business owners for moral as well as business support.
5. E-commerce websites will continue to grow, but standard three and five page corporate websites will be replaced with blogs, (which will also be added to the corporate web sites) making the conversation two way. Customers will get to know the personalities of the companies they buy from through their blogs, those with unattractive personalities beware! Companies will measure their success by the degree to which their customers are willing to interact with them.
People say that in business, as in life, the internet has changed everything, but change is normal and healthy. What has changed so drastically is the rate at which things change. I make a point of always looking forward to the future, but I can remember a time when my grandmother, then the age I am now, was considered too old to learn how to use a new kitchen appliance. We can no longer afford to say ‘Enough! I’m done’. There is so much that is new to learn. The future is a challenge to us all, thankfully it’s challenge that keeps us young.
How do Celebrities know about the futuer ?
One thing I hate about this time of year are all the articles giving a roundup of the events of the year and making predictions for the year ahead. I don’t need a roundup. I was there. As for predictions, the next person who tells me the economy is likely to improve and there will be a growth in social networking is likely to get the a rude response. It’s not a prediction to state the obvious. The way the economy has been, up actually seems more likely than down. That’s the way most things go when they’ve hit the bottom. Having said that, here is my (small) set of predictions for 2010.
1. The number of small businesses will grow quickly. As people are laid off from their jobs and can’t find another they will begin to work for themselves. The ability to learn new skills quickly will become more important than knowledge in any one area.
2. Companies who sell goods and services to this market will do well. Companies small enough to change and target this market will also do well.
3. New tools will be built around the popular social networks, such as twitter, which will allow users to track and measure the effectiveness of their ‘tweets’. The social networking platforms will become even more integrated and ease of use will be prized. Twitter will be more successful than Facebook.
4. Networking groups, on and offline, will prosper as the new small business owners look to other small business owners for moral as well as business support.
5. E-commerce websites will continue to grow, but standard three and five page corporate websites will be replaced with blogs, (which will also be added to the corporate web sites) making the conversation two way. Customers will get to know the personalities of the companies they buy from through their blogs, those with unattractive personalities beware! Companies will measure their success by the degree to which their customers are willing to interact with them.
People say that in business, as in life, the internet has changed everything, but change is normal and healthy. What has changed so drastically is the rate at which things change. I make a point of always looking forward to the future, but I can remember a time when my grandmother, then the age I am now, was considered too old to learn how to use a new kitchen appliance. We can no longer afford to say ‘Enough! I’m done’. There is so much that is new to learn. The future is a challenge to us all, thankfully it’s challenge that keeps us young.
How do Celebrities know about the futuer ?
