FICTION: Automated DR Cannot Be Tailored to Your Environment

IT administrators think that automated DR systems cannot handle different types of hardware, software and virtual servers in use in data centers. IT administrators think that automated DR lacks the flexibility to recover any available system, physical or virtual.

Some automated DR systems can execute failover and failback between any combination of physical and virtual servers and between dissimilar hardware. This enables quick recovery in any environment.

IT administrators think that automated DR systems can only recover part of the data, and the systems rely on other backup applications to restore the rest.

Effective automated DR systems return to the original point of failure and recover all the data at once. These systems are integrated with continuous data protection and snapshot technology to enable full recovery.

There’s a story circulating in the industry that automated DR doesn’t allow IT to test for end-to-end recovery. Administrators think that the recovery systems can only partially test the process. For example, they could test the recovery of a certain data set or application but not the entire environment.

Automated DR systems can and should be fully tested. Therefore when IT administrators purchase an automated DR system, they should assess the testing functionality so that a complete test can be done without disrupting business operations.

Many IT managers think that automated DR systems can only recover one system or application at a time. This is not sufficient for a disaster that brings down multiple applications, services and systems.

In fact, these systems can recover up to five systems at once and restore complete IT services in minutes. This service-oriented recovery encompasses the systems, applications and data that make up critical data center services. The result is a significant reduction or even elimination of downtime.

The research eWEEK conducted for this feature found that with the much-improved bandwidths and networking systems now available, this is no longer an issue. However, only a few years ago many types of data center workloads faced issues related to distances between data centers.

For many businesses, disaster recovery is not necessarily about data backup. Rather, it’s about how fast systems can be brought back up. Certainly, the ability to quickly recover data, applications and systems after downtime is a major indicator of whether a company can bounce back unscathed from a disaster. We were reminded of this yet again after super storm Sandy, when downtime forced thousands of businesses to close their doors. Whether these businesses will reopen anytime soon remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: For those that relied only on systems focusing on backup rather than recovery, the financial toll will be significant.