Skip the navigation

Do-it-yourself disaster recovery

By Julie Bort
August 30, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Network World - While most network executives are looking at server virtualization to reduce hardware costs, the technology could also offer a budgetary bonus: less-expensive disaster recovery. With disaster-facility contracts easily costing upward of $30,000 per month, killing off that budget line item is tempting.
"One of the hardest parts budget-wise [in IT] is disaster recovery and its incredible price tag. Traditionally, you had to duplicate everything you've got in one data center to another and then pray that you never have to use it," says Jason Brougham, enterprise network manager for American Medical Response (AMR Inc.), a Greenwood Village, Colo.-based ambulance service company with 18,000 employees and 255 locations nationwide. "The only way you can afford to build true disaster recovery is to run hot to hot, with both data centers active all the time on servers using virtualization."
Companies with virtualized servers and storage-area networks (SAN) in disparate data centers already have most of the pieces in place to take on in-house disaster recovery: They have a potential backup location in a faraway spot (that likely won't be affected by the disaster). They have network connections between the two sites. Their virtualization and load-balancing software would let one server or SAN take over for another almost instantly if a short-term failure occurs (from routine maintenance to a few hours of blackout).
Network executives easily can make the common-sense leap for full-fledged in-house disaster recovery. If servers float away in a storm or are otherwise permanently damaged, one data center can become the backup for another. Even if you don't bring disaster recovery completely in-house, virtualization can help save money on the facility contract. Fewer virtualized servers do the work of more physical servers.
"The pieces of hardware become less critical in a virtualized environment -- if there are 400 servers, with virtualization you could conceivably do disaster recovery on 20 servers. That might be reaching, but that's the idea," says Vivian Knoerle, principal consultant for Intellinet, a virtualization and disaster recovery systems integrator in Atlanta. "If you do still use a disaster recovery facility for hosting, the expense and hardware requirement can be less, because the number of physical servers can be far less."
Such is the case for insurance company Mutual of Enumclaw, based in Enumclaw, Wash., with 16 offices in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Utah.
"We approach disaster recovery like a life insurance policy. We don't want to have too much, but we want enough," says John Weeks, IT director for Mutual of Enumclaw, which uses virtualization software from

Reprinted with permission from NetworkWorld.com. Story copyright 2010 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved.
Additional Resources
Forrester Consulting - Optimizing Users and Applications in a Mobile World
WHITE PAPER
Solving application issues over the WAN requires careful consideration. Based on their independent research, Forrester Consulting offers recommendations on how to tackle application performance issues, insufficient bandwidth and the inability to quickly restore users in a disaster.

Read now.

Security KnowledgeVault
WHITE PAPER
Security is not an option. This KnowledgeVault Series offers professional advice how to be proactive in the fight against cybercrimes and multi-layered security threats; how to adopt a holistic approach to protecting and managing data; and how to hire a qualified security assessor. Make security your Number 1 priority.

Read now.

Cut Communications Costs Once and for All
WHITE PAPER
New IP-based communications systems are being deployed by small and midsized businesses at a rapid rate. Learn how these organizations are enabling faster responsiveness, creating better customer experiences, speeding office or mobile interactions, and dramatically reducing existing communications costs.

Read now.

Storage White Papers
Datacenter Consolidation Best Practices Whitepaper
The benefits of storage consolidation are being realized by companies and seen as a way to streamline many storage-driven applications. Learn why the...
Eliminating VMware / Storage Related Performance Challenges
How to proactively monitor the performance in a Fibre Channel SAN / vSphere environment is always a concern. Understand the importance of a...
Cloud Environments Have Familiar Storage Challenges
Cloud environments have many storage challenges that are familiar to data center managers, but due to their density and abstraction, the issues become...
Eight Considerations for Evaluating Disk-Based Backup Solutions
In the past, the movement from tape- to disk-based backup has been less compelling due to the expense of storing backup data on...
ExaGrid Helps U.S. Federal Government Agencies Reduce Backup Windows and Improve Data Protection
The U.S. Government has been the largest user of tape-based backup systems since the 1970s. Most agencies have begun to deploy disk storage...
All Storage White Papers
Storage Webcasts
Understand Your Data: The Future of Backup and Archiving
Archiving and Backup are the foundation of the next generation of information governance. However, commodity data protection tools and basic archives are only...
Optimizing Networks for the Cloud
Join guest speaker, Rohit Mehra, IDC Director of Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, to explore current trends, discuss best practices for optimizing Data Center and...
Apps QuickStart Series Part 2: Designing and Deploying SQL Server on VMware vSphere
Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as...
Apps QuickStart Series Part 1: Designing and Deploying Exchange 2010 on VMware vSphere
Download this webcast to learn the virtual hardware design considerations for Exchange 2010, deployment using the building block approach, options for high-availability and...
Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware
Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn...
All Storage Webcasts
Newsletter Sign-Up

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all newsletters | Privacy Policy
IT Jobs