How Automated Disaster Recovery Can Literally Save Your Business

In restoring an IT system after an outage due to any cause, the margin between hours and days offline can often mean all the difference in whether or not a business survives as a going concern.

In the wake of recent natural disasters such as the East Coast's Hurricane Sandy, disaster recovery has become a particularly hot topic among IT administrators and managers. DR has always been crucial in defending against natural disasters, human error and equipment failure—the latter two of which are far more prevalent. Whatever the cause, after a disaster strikes, IT staff can spend hours or days following complex steps packed with reboots to get their organizations back up and running.

Only a few hours of downtime can cost companies millions of dollars. In some online-oriented businesses, a protracted amount of downtime can kill a company. So IT staff definitely feels the pressure to get IT systems back online.

They can alleviate that pressure and get back to business faster by implementing and testing DR systems along with developing plans that address data centers' complex environments. Automation is an essential part of that effort. Automated DR mechanizes the detailed and time-consuming manual recovery process.

When it comes to recovering an IT system from a natural or human-caused disaster, simple, real-time and automated are the terms to keep in mind for effective disaster recovery procedures.