Are you Ready? For a Disaster?

I am sidetracking from the normal blog of Cloud Computing and Centralized Data Storage in Health IT to go back to a basic fundamental. After the news of Hurricane Irene coming into the NYC area, many people were panicking and various government officials urged people to follow a disaster plan. Why? To ensure safety for many residents, communication and update, and prompt performance in case there was a major disaster. Though nothing but minor issues occurred in NYC, I ask the same question to many clients and peers about understanding disaster. Natural or artificial (by lack of proper policy as an example), how ready are you if a disaster happens to occur?

Many peers and companies have to realize and determine the value and cost to lost and/delayed data needed for "normal" operation. I know we do not have bottomless money resources to make a "complete" disaster recovery (DR) but time, effort, and money are needed in case something bad happens.

Computer World: Ready for Trouble
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/101249/Ready_for_Trouble_

Though the article is old, I chuckle on how the article is still relevant today as it did in the past.

The article takes about a scenario and how do you manage disaster in your own home, your client, your employer, etc. As the article points out, there general guidelines to making an effective and successful disaster recovery:

1) Planning for the Unplanned: You have to know your scenarios of disasters and how to properly communicate and document your plan. How could you plan something that is not in writing, easily accessible for many, and known with compliance by the employees? Also, I am not looking for all doomsday scenarios (scope creep and this plan will never be complete and costly) but start with the most common known issues that would impact the stakeholders.

As Glenmede (a company) states: "If the building's power goes out, the critical systems can be brought up within four hours at a "hot site" across town owned by business continuity services and outsourcing provider SunGard Availability Services Inc., a unit of SunGard Data Systems Inc." Meaning, they define how critical certain business processes and understood the cost and value if their own infrastructure went down. Also, they utilize a plan that deemed appropriate so that their business operation could function while they work on restoration on the primary site.

2) State of the Art Technology: Though it could be costly depending upon your current infrastructure, the important part is knowing the existing technologies out there. being familiar with the technology, and implementing that is best for you. your company, etc.

3) Testing Times: This is a no-brainer. Run a disaster recovery to obtain actual real data as well as verify your disaster recovery's success! Why do we believe professors with real world experience? Because they actually do what they preach! Just like that a disaster recovery plan is only as real as actually testing (to expose shortfalls as well as strength). The whole point of testing to ensure you have the right resources, planning/documentations, and know-how for a successful disaster recovery. So when it does happen, we do not encounter an actual disaster without any recovery!!!!

With the old article presented, I come back to the present with cloud computing and how it could be a cost-effective means to disaster recovery. Why? The information is safe in an off-site location and most cloud centers are data centers that have high standard of fault tolerance and redundancy in security, data protection, and service. Again, that is the assumptions

http://www.drj.com/2011-articles/online-exclusive/the-cloud-is-a-cost-effective-option-for-disaster-recovery.html

Cloud Computing could be a good solution to certain users BUT it all depends!! It depends upon you and understanding the strength and weakness of the technology (back to #2)

How does this apply to me and you? We need to really understand what is important to the business. I have seen offices have safe for certain equipment but how much important is your data that keeps your business running? What I address a lot of time with doctors are:
1) How are you backing up your data? That could be easily answered (though the answer might not be correct at times)
2) Do you actually test the data backed up? That could be answered but rather vague
3) How long does it take to bring your data back (DR)? They do not know and didn't really think about...

It is important to understand that backing up your data is good but verifying and replicating your backed up data in a timely manner is CRITICAL!!!!! I hear doctors complain how the back up takes so long. I told them, do you care more about how long the back up takes or how fast you get your data back? The answer is obvious.... But doctors pay significant amount of money backing up with an off-site, Internet-based solution (in Kansas just say) and never tested to see how long it takes for the data to come back from there to here (consider they have image files).. They do not have fiber line channels for high throughput (just high speed Internet) and the data do not dedicate all the bandwidth to them... What we found out was 20GB of Data took anywhere from 8-16hours to just download the data they backed up. What happens if Internet is down? You see the picture about how TIME IS THE ESSENCE of recovery... You have to consider the cost on how it cost You to be DOWN...



Now, with Irene gone.... Are you ready?