Halloween scares - Disaster Recovery

I love Halloween, I always have.  Something about being scared - it could just be an excuse to watch startling teenage slasher-flicks late at night, but I digress...

Disaster Recovery is a topic that there are as many opinions on as there are ghouls on Halloween. There are so many products out there and so many different ways to backup - Tape, Disk, NAS, SAN, fibre-channel,  offsite, incremental, Differential, Full, transactional, Image, file level, and brick level. I wont single-out any vendors but I do see allot of these big name backup service providers playing to the business-owners lack of understanding on what it actually takes to get humpty-dumpty back together again in the event something actually blows-up.

These vendors send in their $5,000 suit sales-guys and follow it up with a smooth WebEx session talking about how their solution can sing and dance. Once the "solution" is sold, the client is handed the software and given the instructions to get it going. Sort of like, "Call us if you need us, read this..."

There is just something about buying a backup solution from the actual person who will be setting it up and maintaining it -someone local, someone available, and someone reliable - namely Teklogic.

I am a big believer in Image Backups - that is - a backup that contains a literal in-time "snapshot" of the device being backed up. This way we have a file that represents a true byte-level image of the machine being backed up. We wont have to mess around with Windows Disks, reboots, updates, drivers and then cataloging the backup file - and god help you if you are using Tape... (Tape is a 4 letter word as far as I'm concerned). With an image backup you prepare a recovery CD ahead of time and if there is ever a need for recovery, you boot with it and restore the image from NAS or external hard disk - that's it, pass go and collect $200... You can even restore this image to a "Virtual Server" hosted by your provider to further reduce downtime while your location is being repaired or server replacement parts are being procured.

Something else notable is that moving forward, Windows Server operating systems will not natively backup to tape - this includes Windows Server 2008. Companies insistent on using tape will have to install 3rd party applications to make this possible. Programs like, BackupExec, Yosemite, or ARCServe. 

Being on top of all the available backup methods and technologies has always been one of my priorities. At Teklogic we perform regular test disaster recovery scenarios with SQL, Exchange and Active Directory to ensure we will be ready in the event we need to use these skills. There is just so much out there, you need to make sure your technology provider is well-versed in the topic of disaster recovery and is familiar with all the different techniques and methodologies.