Disaster can strike at any time and without warning, as Cyclone Gabrielle has recently proven. Some friends of mine live in rural Hawkes Bay, between Napier and Wairoa. Luckily, they saw only minimal damage in their little community, but for several days they were cut off from the outside world. They had no power, no phone, and no internet service. They did have a small generator that they used for a few hours each night, and the community rallied around to ensure that everyone was safe and had enough supplies to keep them going. I was grateful when I was able to receive a text message from them that they were alive and ok. My friends are now working to support others in Wairoa and Gisborne to start the process of cleaning up and rebuilding.
I’m sure for most businesses in Hawke’s Bay, the last thing on their mind right now is how to get their IT systems going again. But there will come a time when this needs to be addressed, and businesses that have a solid plan will have little to worry about. The right time to be planning for disaster recovery is not when the disaster is happening!
Do you have a plan in place and what sort of plan is right for your business?
Do I need Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) or Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?
Sometimes these terms get used interchangeable, but they are very different. Disaster Recovery focuses on how to get your systems back up and running and/or recover your business-critical data in the event of a disaster. Business Continuity focuses on continuing to have functioning IT systems, even during a disaster. BCP can be costly as it requires the business to have a complete or near complete duplicate of their critical IT systems at multiple physical locations. Cloud computing makes this easier, but the costs are still significant. Most small businesses will therefore be looking for a Disaster Recovery Plan.
Data Backups
For a small business, having a regular backup routine is the first step in creating a DRP. The backup should:
· Cover all business-critical data. Backing up your entire server(s) would be even better, but you should at least make sure that all your critical data is backed up. This may mean altering the backup selection when business applications change or are added to – something that is often overlooked.
· Retain multiple copies. Having a backup from last night is great. But what happens if someone accidentally overwrote a critical file two weeks ago and you’ve only discovered it now? By retaining multiple copies, you have a much greater chance of a recovering your data. A common practice in the corporate world is to retain 12 Monthly, 4 Weekly and 5 or 10 Daily backups, however, this does increase storage requirements and costs. We can help you to find a balance that works for your business.
· Be encrypted for security. Having a backup of your data is good, but who else has access to it? By encrypting the backup, only you or an authorised agent – like Raspberry IT – will be able to access it, even if the backup goes missing.
· Be stored on a device that is separate from your main systems. Backing up your server and saving the backup on your server is fine, up until the server itself fails. Then you’re left without your server and without the backup! Magnetic tape used to be common, but many small businesses now use external HDDs or cloud storage. Cloud storage is good because your backup is now offsite.
· Ideally be stored offsite. By offsite, I mean at a location that is not the same as your primary business location. Magnetic tapes were ideal for this as you could contract a company to come in daily and swap the tapes, taking the most recent tape to be stored in their vault. Cloud storage makes it even easier, as you can choose to have your backup data in multiple locations around the country, or even the globe.
· Be tested regularly. By regularly attempting a “test” recovery, you can have peace of mind that your backups are working, and that recovery should be possible in the event of a disaster.
Redundant Hardware
The term ‘redundant’ may make it sound like ‘hardware I don’t need’, which in a way it is. Your server may have redundant power supplies or hard disk drives, so that if one item fails, the server will continue to work with the remaining items. Redundant hard disk drives create a very cheap insurance policy to ensure that your system keeps working. We recently installed a new ‘server’ for a client in Upper Hutt. I say ‘server’ because it was in essence a desktop machine with some extra hardware. I quoted the client for a second SSD to be setup in a redundant array. The cost for the second drive and the array setup was a huge $80. Should the original drive fail, the second drive will take over without any interruption.
Do you need to think about having a Disaster Recovery Plan? Raspberry IT can help create a plan that suits your business. Contact us today!
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