eBook I helped author discussing how new technology has affected disaster recovery planning

1. Five Things
You Need to
Know Today
About Disaster
Recovery
Planning
The Changing Face
of Disaster Recovery

2. Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Multiple Flavors Aren’t Just for Ice Cream Anymore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Virtual This, Virtual That—Let’s Get Real . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
When Did Weather Metaphors Become So Common? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Wait…This Sounds Expensive? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Hope Is Not a Strategy — the Hidden Secret of Disaster Recovery Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Fantastic! What’s Next? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3. 3
Five Things
You Need to Know Today
About Disaster
Recovery Planning
five things
Introduction
As a busy data center manager, you might be
struggling to keep up with the challenge of
What would you do if an employee forgot to unplug
a humidifier in his or her cubicle and the power grid
continually doing more with fewer resources . IT has feeding your servers and storage imploded?
become an integral part of business operation; in
fact, most, if not all of the infrastructure you support
is critical for keeping your company up and running .
However, despite being asked to do more with less,
Don’t know?
you probably haven’t gotten any more budget or
We are here to help.
team members, so you may have been forced to
put some projects on the back burner .
Chances are disaster recovery is one of those
projects you’d like to bring to the front of the priority This guide will cover five characteristics of data
queue, and for good reason . It’s nearly impossible centers today that require new thinking when it
to turn on the news without being bombarded by comes to disaster recovery planning:
all the potential risk out in the world . Whether it is 1 . The new face of IT: Mixed platforms everywhere
turbulent weather, natural disasters or man-made 2 . How virtualization can change everything
accidents, something bad seems to always be 3 . Cloud computing and the new model of IT service
happening . delivery
4 . How to measure the return on investment (ROI) of
When is the last time you took a look at your disaster disaster recovery
recovery planning? What do you expect would 5 . Planning and testing for higher confidence
happen if the ceiling collapsed in your data center?
Soon, you’ll be ready to tackle these new realities of
disaster recovery planning, with new approaches to
protection that can make your life easier .

4. 4
Multiple Flavors Aren’t Just for Ice
Cream Anymore
Multi-platform data centers are no longer an The move from mainframes to smaller servers made
exception . They have become quite normal . the data center strategy simple: When you needed
Several years ago, most data centers were pretty more applications, just bought more servers .
homogeneous; all of the data residing there typically Servers were cheap, so why not? The system
came from one vendor . This made things pretty easy worked well for a time, until the servers began to
to manage . There was only one set of instructions to take up way too much space and use way too much
learn and one phone number to call if anything went power, even as most of the server resources weren’t
wrong . The problem was that this data also carried a even being used .
massive price tag and was called a mainframe .
The solution to the problem was called virtualization .
As the IT world continued to grow, several engineers Virtualization allowed data centers to consolidate to
and innovative companies (mostly out of California) a more manageable size and footprint . The problem
started to design much cheaper processors, was that all of these changes overlapped . Nothing
allowing other folks to build real servers out of PC ever went away completely . Data centers just got a
components . These new servers used a new set bit smaller, or applications were shuffled around .
of common standards, and they had a much lower
cost barrier for entry, even for small organizations . What is left today is a typical data center . It has
Large organizations took advantage as well, and been built up over the years with multiple flavors of
both had a buffet of building huge data centers with platforms and vendors: a little bit of mainframe, a
these x86 building blocks . Some call this the golden little bit of x86 and a whole lot of virtualization .
age of the data center . Analysts simply called it the
So what happens if the power goes out?
client-server model .
Unfortunately, the hodge-podge of solutions in the
data center means a little bit of this and a little bit
of that for recovery planning as well . You would
need one plan for the mainframe, one for the Linux
servers, one for the Windows servers and probably
a virtual recovery plan, too .
More flavors, more confusion, more headaches .
multi
platform

5. 5
virtuality
Virtual This, Virtual That—
Let’s Get Real
Hidden within the jumble of mixed-platform data The typical process to recover a physical server
centers is a secret . All those virtual resources is often:
can actually be used for more than simply virtual 1 . Find or buy equivalent or compatible physical
machine recovery . One wonderful thing about servers
virtualization is that virtual machines can be used to 2 . Install an operating system
run many different types of workloads . This flexibility 3 . Install patches and updates
can, and should, be applied to disaster recovery . 4 . Install applicable applications
Why not create a virtual recovery platform that can 5 . Install patches and updates
offer protection for all your workloads, including 6 . Upload backup data
physical, virtual, Windows and Linux?
Using virtual recovery, almost all those steps can be
Virtual recovery plans can simplify, and in some made a thing of the past . The process to recover a
cases eliminate, many of the platform-specific physical server can be as simple as:
headaches of recovering from a disaster . 1 . Power on virtual equivalent
2 . Be thankful you no longer have to deal with
physical servers
This is a far more elegant approach that can
ultimately save a great deal of time as well .

6. 6
When Did Weather Metaphors
Become So Common?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve If you think about this, disaster recovery is a natural
probably heard that cloud computing is the next big benefit of using this type of resource-consumption
thing . You might have even seen a TV advertisement model . Disaster recovery is all about the unknown—
or two talking about cloud computing . What is it, not knowing when you might need extra
and can it affect, or better yet, improve disaster resources, how many resources or for how long .
recovery? The on-demand elastic model of cloud computing
is perfect for those rather “cloudy” requirements,
We should probably begin with what cloud don’t you think?
computing is . Some might say that when you look
up a definition of cloud computing, you’ll find this: But how do you get there? Most agree that the first
“buzzword .” But there are actually some well- stepping stone is virtualization . After all, virtualization
accepted characteristics that define what is and is the main underlying technology that allows this
is not considered to be a cloud of computers . cloud delivery model to be a reality .
How I know my data center is ready to rain: So if you do have any aspirations for a cloudy
1 . Shared infrastructure (or, plays well with others) disaster recovery future, the first step to take is
2 . Rapid elasticity to virtualize as many of the pieces that make up
3 . On-demand, self-service resource acquisition your disaster recovery plan and infrastructure
model today as possible .
4 . Per-use billing
5 . Standard internet protocols
6 . Measurable
thenextbigthing

7. 7
costsavings
galore
Wait…This Sounds Expensive
Virtualization has already proven its cost saving traditional standby physical servers . Think about
benefits in production data centers around the it . The expensive duplicate infrastructure that data
world . By reducing the sprawl created by years of centers used to be need can now be a thing of
accumulation of commodity x86 servers, virtual the past . Eliminate the burden of keeping backup
machines are now accepted as a cheaper way to versions of each make, model and vendor version of
run workloads . Not only do you dramatically lower all the servers you run . Replace all of it with a simple
your server hardware costs, but you also lower the pool of virtual resources . This drastic reduction in
cost of powering, cooling and maintaining them . the infrastructure has an immediate reduction in the
However, despite these cost savings, there are cost of your disaster recovery plan .
still many barriers to fully adopting virtualization
as the universal platform of most data centers . But infrastructure isn’t the only thing that costs
While everyone agrees that it is a cheaper way to money . Your time is ultimately far more valuable than
run workloads, from a performance and security the gizmos you manage . Virtualization also reduces
standpoint, there are still concerns around whether the overhead and labor associated with older
it is a better method . backup and recovery-based protection approaches .
Disaster recovery, on the other hand, faces far less
scrutiny when it comes to infrastructure changes . As Why bother with convoluted,
such, it is an area where a fully virtual strategy could multi-step recovery processes
be adopted immediately . Since disaster recovery is when you can streamline
often forgotten, better performing infrastructure will all your administrative tasks
be welcome by everyone involved, or sometimes the virtually?
changes might even go unnoticed . (This is a good
thing, by the way . Getting everyone to notice your
brilliant new disaster recovery plan sometimes takes
an actual disaster .) With virtual machines, everything from day-to-day
maintenance, to recovery and even testing can be
But even if better performing recovery capabilities as simple as a few clicks of a mouse .
go unnoticed, the immediate cost savings won’t . As
part of a disaster recovery plan, one virtual machine By implementing virtual disaster recovery, you can
host could take the place of up to twenty or more effectively get a double-whammy in terms of real
costs savings . Cheaper to buy, and cheaper to
run—what more could you ask?

8. 8
the
hiddensecret
Hope Is Not a Strategy—the Hidden
Secret of Disaster Recovery Planning
For many years, the hidden secret of disaster Virtualization eliminates the problems associated
recovery has been testing . Are you surprised? Think with a bare metal restore . There is no need to match
about it for a minute . When’s the last time you tested hardware, or go through multiple steps just to get a
your ability to restore a workload? Now, how many test server up and running . This easy management
did you test? And (here’s the kicker) what fraction allows you to simply select the virtual machines
of your total workloads was that? Backup and you want to test, create copies of them and power
restoration is a real pain . Coordinating with everyone them on . Virtual networks also allow this process
required from a facilities standpoint and getting to be completely non-disruptive to your production
everyone to agree on a schedule is hard enough, let processes .
alone having to rely on antiquated technologies like
tape backup once you to get there . In cases where Safe and easy—what more can you ask for? Easy
the difficulties associated with disaster recovery testing seems like a simple concept . But the reality
testing is too much, it simply never gets done . is, when you have real confidence in your DR plans,
you will have confidence in setting service levels .
The problem is that no testing or even infrequent
testing means no confidence . After all, how can you With the ability to easily and often run disaster
be sure your plans will work if you don’t try them out recovery tests, you can accurately measure the
once in a while? Even worse, in today’s business time you expect to take recovering workloads when
world, where everyone expects you to publish needed . Instead of hoping that you can recover
service levels and guarantee them no less, how from an outage in one or two days, now you can
can this be done without an accurate prediction of guarantee an accurate recovery time objective
what a worst case scenario will look like? Users now (RTO) and tell everyone about it, too!
demand accurate expectations . One or two days,
This can even be used as a competitive advantage
or other ambiguous service levels are no longer
for your company . Everyone loves routine, so people
acceptable . How can you publish an accurate
want to know that in the event of a disaster, you can
number if you never run tests to prove it?
help them get back to routine as quickly as possible .
Wow, this DR stuff is really becoming a pain isn’t it? Publishing service levels you can be confident in are
Again, the magic technology can be virtualization . tremendously valuable for any organization .

9. 9
Allowable downtime for workloads:
Required Availability Required Uptime hours/year Allowable Downtime /year
90% (0 .9) 7889 36 .5 days
99% (0 .99) 8678 3 .6 days
99 .9% (0 .999) 8757 9 hours
99 .99% (0 .9999) 8765 50 minutes
99 .999% (0 .99999) 8766 5 minutes
Fantastic! What’s Next?
Go ahead and take some time to review your current disaster recovery in your organization . Now more
disaster recovery plans . This new virtual world than ever, it’s an important discussion to have,
makes disaster recovery easy, but you still can’t particularly given the number of changes we’ve
move to it without some effort . Everything will take talked about taking hold in data centers today .
some time and planning . Use this guide as a bit
of a jumpstart on what to be aware of, and where Here are some additional disaster recovery
to start . resources from Novell:
Try initiating some conversations within your Product information:
http://www .novell .com/products/forge/
organization . Ask people how important they are
http://www .novell .com/products/protect/
(everyone loves that) . This will help you build a
better understanding of what the RTO needs really Customer Success Stories:
are for each workload running in the data center . http://www .novell .com/success/hps_pharmacies .html
http://www .novell .com/success/reed_smith .html
Use this simple uptime-downtime chart above
to talk to your users about the dollar-cost impact Whitepaper:
these service levels might translate to . If your order www .novell .com/consolidated-dr-wp .pdf
processing application, for example, was classified
as having three nines (0 .999) of importance, how Webinar:
many transactions do you expect would be lost or http://www .novell .com/media/dr
delayed, and what would that cost if you allowed for
eight hours of downtime? Does that align with the
cost of providing that three nines guarantee?
Remember, disaster recovery isn’t quite what it used
to be . With mixed platforms, virtualization clouds, cost
confusion and testing, there’s an awful lot to consider .
Hopefully this guide has given you some food for
Arm yourself with as much
thought as you consider updating or changing how
knowledge as you can
your organization looks at disaster recovery .
find and start having some
conversations about disaster
Arm yourself with as much knowledge as you can recovery in your organization.
find and start having some conversations about