Businesses don’t realise that for a small investment in IT equipment and consultancy they can safeguard their most precious asset – the data stored on their servers. Perhaps we should take a step back and begin by making company directors aware that data, electronically stored, is the lifeblood of a company and if it is lost, it can spell the demise of the company.
Let’s put it this way, in the past, when Rendili have been brought in to resurrect a situation from data loss/disaster to a fully operational system, the company management concerned have always learned from that experience and implemented a full disaster recovery plan.
Now, rather than dealing with the aftermath, Rendili are promoting a preventative approach and in this case study we will be describing the DR plan for Femcare-Nikomed Ltd that was implemented recently.
Femcare-Nikomed Ltd
As part of the IT strategy, it was decided to upgrade both of the main two servers and additionally to commission a separate DR server that could be used as an immediate replacement in the event of the servers becoming inoperable for whatever reason.
Using the Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery suite and with the deployment of 6 USB disks (3 per server) we were able to keep the DR server completely up to date at an off-site location. The disks were rotated at regular intervals to ensure operational readiness.
Each time a new disk is brought to the DR site, a full recovery is run onto the DR server. The disks within the DR server have been arranged so that both live servers can be recreated, together with the use of VMware for the secondary live server.
A further refinement is a scheduled restore of tape data in the interim between disk swaps to bring the DR server right up to date.
Nikomed are delighted with the new setup as not only do they have peace of mind, but the system performance and reliability easily surpasses that of the previous configuration.
Rendili consultancy
Rendili have over 50 man years of experience in IT. We can survey your IT setup and make recommendations both for your current IT plan and a custom DR plan that addresses your full requirements. Our objectives in doing this can be simply stated as follows:
- To reduce downtime and therefore loss of revenue to an absolute minimum in the event of an unforeseen disaster.
- To plan for server replacement prior to system failure.
- To ensure that the most cost effective Disaster Recovery (DR) solution is provided.
The key question to answer is how long can you operate without access to company data?
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