The collection of data is what keeps a company going. Data forms the basis for future decisions, informs analysis, manages transactions, and keeps a business compliant. It is essential to keep a good record of everything that happens. However, in the constantly evolving world we live in, it can be difficult to maintain data. Unpredictable natural disasters, stormy weather, server damage, human error, or cyber threats can all affect data storage. This is where a disaster recovery data center will come to the rescue. Usually, companies will opt to store data in a data center to provide more efficiency. In this article we will learn about what is Disaster Recovery Data Center and how to setup that up? We will also cover some of the best practices on data center disaster recovery and give you some tips at the end of the article. Let’s dive in.
What Is a Data Center?
A data center is a centralized physical facility that keeps corporate computing, networking, storage, and other IT equipment inside. These facilities come in all sizes – from a room to a warehouse.
The data center will provide all the computing power a company needs to successfully run its applications, services, and data. Essentially, it is the central brain of the organization. However, this brain system can be vulnerable.
What Is a Disaster Recovery Data Center?
By definition, disaster recovery is the ability to restore functions and access once a network is compromised. This is usually after a security incident, natural disaster, or human error. Disaster recovery ensures business continuity and prevents downtime.
A disaster recovery data center ensures that all the IT infrastructure in your data center is back up and running after the business takes a hit. A good disaster recovery data center is created to endure.
The design of disaster recovery for a data center looks at architectural planning, site management, weather patterns, and costs. Every element of a disaster recovery data center is geared toward prevention or getting back up.
Why Do You Need a Data Center Disaster Recovery?
Data centers ensure that a company stays on its feet. A disaster – be it natural or man-made – will knock the wind out of any organization. A ransomware attack or earthquake will both damage your business and disrupt operations.
Data center disaster recovery is essential to prevent the looming threat of downtime as well. Downtime is a difficult space for any business. While larger companies might feel less of the blow, for small to medium-sized businesses, the risk of downtime can mean the end.
Downtime can lead to:
- Loss of income
- Loss of clients
- Higher recovery costs
- Data breaches
- Disruption of services
- Retrenchments
- Reputational damage
Your data center is crucial to your company which makes having data center disaster recovery just as important.
Disaster Recovery Data Center - Mandatory for Compliance
Data center disaster recovery is based on preserving and protecting the data within a business. This includes the private and confidential data of clients that could be leveraged in ransomware attacks. As a result, disaster recovery for data centers is mandatory for most organizations.
Data privacy policies and laws will enforce disaster recovery for businesses dealing with large amounts of private data. However, actively investing in data center disaster recovery ensures that your data is secure and compliance is met.
Disaster Recovery for Data Lakes and Data Warehouses
When it comes to data lakes and data warehouses, disaster recovery is also important. A data lake stores unstructured raw data while data warehouses store structured and archived data. Both are important for a business to function.
Data lakes and warehouses also form alternative disaster recovery solutions themselves. This is because the data stored is unchanged and builds up over time. Disaster recovery for data lakes and data warehouses includes regular backups and consistent security.
How to create a Disaster Recovery Data Center using Virtualization
Virtualization is the process of making something virtual – as its name suggests. More companies are now choosing to move to the cloud and virtualize operations, storage, networking, and security.
Disaster recovery can be enhanced through the virtualization of data centers in several ways. These include:
- Improved resource utilization by only using the infrastructure you need to secure and store your data.
- Creating VM backups and replicas to store in remote locations. This will allow you to move operations from one server to the other without disrupting operations or data integrity.
- Reducing compatibility issues as virtual machines can be recovered on almost any hardware.
- Minimizing expenses. Virtualization has the one great benefit of saving you money on expanding physical infrastructure and servers for your disaster recovery.
- Reducing downtime. A virtual system allows you to automatically divert resources and operations to different servers to ensure business continuity.
What is a Disaster Recovery Plan for Data Centers?
A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a document outlining how an organization will recover from a data loss or system outage. This plan is set up to minimize downtime and prevent data loss by providing a step-by-step guide for restoring critical systems and data. A proper data center disaster recovery plan will include backups for data, server replication, assessments, and advanced threat intelligence.
A disaster recovery plan will help to:
- Prevent or limit the overall damage.
- Reduce interruptions to restore services and business operations faster.
- Train and prepare your staff.
What are the best practices for Disaster Recovery Data Center?
A disaster recovery data center is tailored to the needs of your business. Some of the data center disaster recovery best practices and important elements include:
Assessing Data Assets
This will help to understand which applications and services and critical for business continuity.
Backup of Data
Data backup should be done on both on-site and off-site premises. Automation will help this process greatly.
Identification of Threats
Figure out which threats you are most vulnerable to. This includes cyber-attacks, natural disasters, tech failure, or geopolitical factors. Having a good understanding of these aspects will help to secure them better.
Establishing a Disaster Recovery Site
These are the alternative servers used in a disaster. Usually, the options include on-site cold storage, off-site cold storage, one-site warm backup, and off-site warm backup.
Setting Up the RTO and RPO
When it comes to what a disaster recovery plan metric is, two of the most essential are your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and your Recovery Point Objective (RPO). We have a special webinar on RPO and RTO that can be access with this link: Understanding BCDR strategy by defining your RPO and RTO for applications and services
The Recovery Time Objective is the maximum acceptable length of time that systems and applications can be down without causing significant damage to the business. While some applications can be offline for an hour, others only need minutes to recover.
Alternatively, the Recovery Point Objective is the maximum age of data you need to recover to resume operations after a major event. The RPO helps to define the minimum frequency of backups.
Testing Your Backup
A good disaster recovery data center will be tried and tested to ensure ideal results. Simulations and practice runs can be used to test the disaster recovery capabilities and help to improve on any flaws.
Final Thoughts
The organization would definitely require a data center for disaster recovery and business continuity plans. There are methods and best practices to setup the disaster recovery data center. Sangfor Technologies prides itself on the ability to provide advanced, intelligent, and simplified Disaster Recovery Management solutions that are customized to your every need.
The solutions offered by Sangfor include active-passive disaster recovery and active-active stretched cluster solutions for both homogeneous environments and heterogeneous environments. Download the Sangfor HCI Disaster Recovery Brochure to find out more about how Sangfor can help your company in a crisis. Visit www.sangfor.com for more information.
