Disaster Recovery

The thing about disasters is that most of the time nobody knows they are about to happen – except, on occasions, the weather forecasters. But even though someone can predict an impending event, they do not necessarily know what the consequences will be. This means the people on the receiving end need to plan for any and every possible thing that can go wrong.

Take the floods in the South of England as a most recent example of good old wrath-of-god type stuff. It is fair to say that quite a few businesses will be closed or severely impeded by the loss of their computer systems from water damage and loss of power.

• How many of them have a backup ?
• How many of them have a disaster recovery plan ?
• Will they ever recover?

The implications of not having a plan when disaster strikes are only ever really understood when disaster happens, or even a near miss. Flooding means that not only is a redundant environment a good idea, it may be the only thing that can function, especially when a large scale flood knocking out power for extended periods of time occurs. Effects of water on electrical appliances are well known. Water damaged systems can be completely destroyed along with the data. However, how do you get spare parts or replacements to a flooded area by conventional means if the routes to and from your datacenter are flooded?

Your business is now in peril. You have no ability to respond to your customers, and it could be days or weeks before you can be operational. Your personnel may not be able to physically get to your datacenter. If the backups are held on-site;  things could be grim.

Celerity have a proven track record of resilient solutions design, encompassing disaster recovery and high availability that incorporates multi-site design, high availability clusters, backup and recovery together with storage management. We have worked with many organisations to ensure that their systems and processes are redundant, survivable and adhere to best practice. We pride ourselves on working with our customers to meet their requirements should the worst happen, and keep their systems operational.

Should you require any further information on disaster recovery or wish to talk to a Celerity Representative about your requirements, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Steve Laidler, Technical Consultant, Celerity Limited

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