What server infrastructure do you need for the next 5 years?

We want to help companies and their IT support personnel, (in house or external) to find the right computing infrastructure for the next 5 years and beyond. 

If you are considering new hardware, or moving to new systems, we believe virtual computing should be considered as one of your options.  Virtual computing enables you to move from today’s systems to tomorrows systems with relative ease.  You can expand and extend your computing services more easily at a lower cost and reduced risk.  This is particularly the case when you bring in the Scale Computing HC3 approach where virtualisation and storage are combined. Read more

We are holding a short seminar on the 2nd May at C4L to show how virtual computing with Scale HC3 might be a way forward. Find out more here

Can virtual servers help my business?

Given the buzz in the IT press you would believe everyone has gone virtual or is going virtual.  This is just not the case.  While many businesses may have started or made tentative steps in this direction there are many who have not.  Whatever your position we believe the time is now right to investigate and understand the “virtual options” that may work for your business.

This is why we have teamed up with C4L and ScaleComputing to put on a seminar for small businesses to cover virtual computing and using a data centre to backup and keep your information secure (including DR).

We think this is a unique opportunity to see these technologies in one place, how they work together and what role they play for small businesses.

If you are looking at your computing infrastructure needs for the next 5 years this should be good for you.

Find out more here

Identify your key applications

People in small businesses tend to keep their heads down and press on, only occasionally stopping to take stock.  Given that we are all highly dependent on our applications and systems it is always good to periodically review which of them are most important.  

Do you have an up-to-date comprehensive list of all the shared business applications people use? Who uses each application? What happens if one goes wrong?  How does this affect the business?  How long can people work without it? What is the impact on the business and the individual?

In the event of a disaster which applications do you need first to keep the business working?

Start by creating a general overview, list all the applications the business uses, you may be surprised by the number.  Add the columns for the different questions and criteria.  Create a comprehensive list so that you can order and filter the list by the various criteria. This list is important because it brings everything together in one place and it becomes an important communication document within the business.

A Disaster Recovery Review should start with this overview, test it on your colleagues, are all applications listed, have you missed one, do people agree? 

The final step is to decide the priority business applications, as this will be the order of applications to look at in detail from a failure and DR perspective. 

New Year – Review your DR

Time to review

The New Year is traditionally a time to reset the clock, so it is a good time to review your Disaster Recovery process.  Now is a good time to add DR to your Agenda and keep it here, it is only too easy to put it back.

Last year we had one major call for DR (see Disaster DoesStrike) and several smaller less dramatic calls to use the backups.  The problem with computer systems is that they are continually changing and over a period of time these changes can add up to quite a large shift.  This is an issue for DR as the system that worked well last year may not work as well now.

Over the next few weeks I will look at various aspects of the DR review, but I think it would be a good idea for everyone to set time aside and book a short DR review in the next month.  Start small and book a couple of hours to start the process and keep the topic on your agenda.

Better still book yourself a “fire drill” to test your DR process.

A full DR incident might only be a once in a lifetime event, but it could happen any time.  Be prepared, don’t get caught out.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!

Most people Say “YES” when asked if computer backups are important.

Often the answer is “NO” when asked if they have up to date backups in more than one place.

3 simple questions

1. Do you have a good backup process with have up to date backups?  “Yes”, award yourself 3 stars.
2. Do you copy your backups to a second location or take a copy off site? “Yes” award yourself 2 stars.
3. Do you practise restore and test your backup periodically? “Yes” award yourself 1 star.

Add up your stars

“3 stars”, the likelihood is you have all your eggs in one basket.  If there is a fire or someone steals your computers you may have nothing to go back to.

“5 stars”, you are on the way to being a bit of a star yourself.

“6 stars”, you are a star (but don’t become complacent).

What next

Less than “3 stars”, it is time to think seriously about your backup position.

“3 stars” is good, but you could do better.  Think about having a second copy of your backup in a different location.

“5 stars” is almost perfect.  You only need to practise and prove that all is OK.

“6 stars” is practically perfect.  Don't be smug, are you the only one?  What happens when you are away?

What would it take to make you a star?

Don’t slip up, backup!

I like this slogan that my colleague Emma came up with, it is only too easy to slip up and ignore your backups.  The best way is to have some form of automated backup process that works in the background and only alerts you if it has not worked, but it is always good to check occasionally.

There are several ways to look after your data and each one has its merits and drawbacks.  The simplest and often easiest is to copy your files to another drive or the cloud.  This can be very simple and works well for simple file data, but as you move to database and shared applications this approach may not be adequate.  If you lose your computer, or if it fails, you will have to rebuild a new one with all your applications before putting the files back.  This can be a time consuming and painful process.

We have found from bitter experience that “image” based backups work best, they allow you to restore the complete computer, operating system, applications and data.  The backup image can be put onto different hardware and you can be up and running in a short time with a minimum of fuss. 

We think image based backups are a “no brainer” for server and shared computers as you can also use the same process to transfer your server to updated or new hardware, almost without interrupting people using the server.

Disaster does strike

Although you plan to avoid disasters they will always happen, usually from a combination of circumstances that you have not anticipated or thought extremely unlikely.  What is more there may be some additional twist that will make sure recovery is not straight forward.

A week ago one of our customers lost several key servers that needed to be restored so that the business could get back to normal operation.  I am pleased to report that ShadowProtect from StorageCraft did the job and we were able to bring the servers back on different hardware, but it was not an easy ride and the experience reinforced several points.

1 Test your disaster recovery process so that you know

• How long it will take
• The equipment you will need
• There will be no critical decisions to make
• You can be confident because you have done it at least once

2 Restoring large quantities of data can take a long time.  Business data is continually growing; do you really need to restore 1.5TB of data for the system to work? Will it be 3TB next year?

3 If you lose your servers you will need alternatives to restore to. In this case there was almost sufficient capacity available; only one new server had to be provided.

4 There is nothing worse than going through an 18 hour restore process for it to fail because of some equipment incompatibility and you have to start again.  On this occasion we hit a 2TB to 3TB disk compatibility issue; we had to do some fast thinking and start again.

5 The benefit of practice and following a documented process cannot be underestimated when the pressure is on and people want to know when they can get back to work.

Everyone will agree that practising the DR process is a good idea, but they do not always want to pay or make time for it.  If you are responsible for this do not be put off, you need to do everything you can to reduce stress and ensure success in the event of disaster.

There are many things that I will look at in more detail over the coming weeks.