Business Continuity

Business Continuity

Business continuity is reliant upon many factors including:

  • Cloud Backups
  • Disaster Recovery Planning
  • Equipment Tracking
  • Virtualization

Cloud Backups

How Cloud Backups Play a Part

Cloud backups play an important role in business continuity. Contrary to equipment tracking and virtualziation which pertain to the physical equipment, cloud backups are all about the data. Cloud backups provide many benefits including:

  • Disaster recovery - cloud backups fulfill the disaster recovery business requirement because they are located offsite and are available 24/7.
  • Data availability - files backed up to the cloud are available 24/7 using a device with internet access. Log into the cloud account to view or restore files at any time.
  • Ransomware and virus protection - files backed up to our cloud protect you from local Ransomware and virus infections. While Ransomware encrypts all files on the local drive, attached drives and mapped network drives, it does not affect files stored in our cloud. If an infection occurs, simply restore files from the cloud instead of suffering from downtime.
  • File protection - cloud backups save multiple versions of files based on the amount of data retention set. This protects files that are accidentally overwritten, corrupted or encrypted. This also allows the entire data set to be restored to a set point in time in the case of Ransomware attacks, virus infections, deletion and more.

More Information

For information about cloud backup plans, visit the Desktop & Laptops page, the Server Backups page or visit the Choosing the Right Backup Plan page to find the perfect plan for your unique environment.




Cloud Backups


Disaster Recovery Planning

Planning for disasters is an investment, but is well worth the effort. Disaster recovery planning includes:

  • Asking questions - how will you recover if a natural disaster hits? Or a Ransomware attack? Or an employee destroys data on their last day? These are the types of questions you need to ask to prepare your business in the event one of these ever happens.
  • Implementing policies - once all questions have been answered, create policies so everyone knows what their role is and how to respond to such events.
  • Practicing for critical events - running through different scenarios and finding where vulnerabilities exist is key to a quick recovery. Practicing the recovery process before an event occurs provides people with the skills to respond rather than react to unfortunate events and can greatly reduce lost productivity.
  • Sharing information - information about the recovery process should be shared with every department. The greater the processes and expectations are communicated, the faster your network will recover. For instance, while the IT department is restoring services, the Communications department can be alerting managers so they can alert customers. Communicating with end clients so they know what to expect, and when, will help maintain your relationship with them as well as your business reputation.


Equipment Tracking

Maintaining a list of equipment, with purchase dates and specs, increases business continuity in the following ways:

  • Scheduled maintenance windows notify customers ahead of time so they can plan their needs accordingly.
  • Planned upgrades are smoother transitions than waiting until hardware fails and scrambling to recover.
  • The life cycle of equipment can be planned for and predicted based on usage, other equipment and company growth.
  • A budget for the equipment can be secured if the need for it is known in advance.




Virtualization

Virtualization

Why it is More Effecient

Implementing virtualization is important because virtualization is more efficient and cost effective in many ways including:

  • Providing better hardware allocation - virtualization allocates physical resources in a way that allows the best possible usage of each component. When needs change, virtualizedresources can be quickly reallocated in ways traditional servers simply are incapable of doing.
  • Reduced footprint - better use of physical resources reduces both the physical and environmental footprint. From capital outlay to electrical usage and battery backups to support the environment, a smaller footprint means cost savings.
  • Redundancy - when set up correctly, a virtualized environment includes hardware and data redundancy. The purpose for this is to automate failover when any one component fails. Failures can be a single hard drive or an entire storage server, but should be accounted for when building the environment.
  • Minimizing maintenance windows - one of the greatest benefits virtualization provides is a decrease in downtime. Virtualized servers:
    • Boot faster
    • Are able to be moved live to other servers for maintenance or other issues
    • Can be rolled back to a previous snapshot if an issue occurs, for example, with a software update
    • Have faster recovery times in cases of disaster
    • Can be cloned for testing updates or making changes before going live
  • Scalability - virtualized networks are typically much more scalable. Storage, processing, and network capacity can be scaled as needed without downtime or adversely affecting the existing network.

More Information

For more information about the benefits of virtualization, visit the Server Virtualization page.


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