A Disaster Recovery Plan is Better than Backup

Most businesses, governments, and organizations, no matter how small, usea network, a server, and a database to manage their daily operations and store vital information. Should there ever be a “disaster” (an unintended disruption of normal), all work would cease and information would be completely lost. A single disaster could cost an organization up to $25,000 an hour or $600,000 a day.

A “disaster” doesn’t necessarily mean a terrible incident. In layman’s terms, it simply refers to a system crash. Human error, power outages, and weather most commonly cause disasters. No matter what you do or how carefully you plan, you cannot prevent them.

Disaster Recovery Plan vs. Backup

Many organizations routinely backup their data on tape based drives. Those backups methods, however, don’t provide rapid recovery after a disaster. You have to access them and they are sometimes stored offsite. Then, you have to upload them and update them. And, in some cases, you need to re-configure what you’re uploading. That could take time – an enormous amount of time. And, well, as previously shown, that could cost you. And, what about the data you haven’t yet backed up? Even if you backed up religiously, there will be a gap where vast amounts of data will be lost in the limbo. And, then there’s downtime. Backups don’t fix downtime.

A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a documented, step-by-step process and/or procedure by which an organization protects and recoversan organization’s entire working system in the event of a disaster. It decreases downtime and diminishes data loss.

Disaster Recovery Plan

DRP developmentnormally begins by evaluating an organization’s procedures and needs. Certain analysis and studies are generated and then a plan can be put together. The process can sound complicated, especially because a lot of acronyms are used. The main ones are as follows:

o BIA: Business Impact Analysis

o RA: Risk Analysis

o RTO: Recovery Time Objective – the target amount of time a system can be down.

o RPO: Recovery Point Objective – the point in which a system must be recovered.

UCG Technologies

UCG Technologies (UCG) works exclusively with IBM Power Systems (IBM i) and protects all platforms from 10GB to in excess of 100TB.

Options include cloud backup to two remote data centers, hybrid cloud, or private cloud.

To protect against natural disasters or other catastrophic events, most companies reply on tape-based backup or high availability. Companies looking to manage this challenging issue find cost effective solutions with UCG Enterprise Cloud Backup & DR (formerly VAULT400). 

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