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Learn the pros and cons of remote-availability systems

Interesting article. I have to add one option that in my opinion can save a lot of budget dollars when planning for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery especially in Healthcare IT.

As we become more and more aware of the potential threats that can disrupt daily IT operations we can only think that better planning must be considered from an engineering stand point. As Mr. Talon pointed out remote availability has its benefits and drawbacks. But one or more options are available and that is to take these potential threats in consideration when planning a new construction or relocation of an organization or data center.

As many organizations plan to build or relocate their data centers off site, Disaster Recovery Planning can take an important part when making a decision on a location and remote access infrastructure. The planning of remote data centers based on an effective Disaster Recovery Plan can save a lot of money on monthly costs because now you not only own the data center it also serves as a disaster recovery site.

For example, if a large healthcare delivery network has six hospitals throughout the state of Florida and shares a remote data center located where weather threats are not so eminent, not only the data center can serve as a DR site but also other hospitals within the organization with the same infrastructure can serve as recovery sites as well. After all they might share the same core and legacy applications and maybe a common database and Master Patient Index.

I made a point of using the healthcare industry because that is what I specialize in but it can apply to any business model in my opinion. Of course bandwidth plays an important role but the cost of contracted remote recovery or co-location sites will be far less.

Thanks
Charles Olmeda
Healthcare Information Technology Services

While a one for one replication of production to back-up servers is an easy math problem, most shops can't afford to double their hardware investment. In a current project, I used a discovery tool to map each of over 1400 servers, mapping applications, server load, available storage, current processor utilization, and current available bandwidth. After mapping the entire "production shop", as well as identifying diverse servers with additional capacity (all areas of concern), I began to map alternate locations for applications, not one for one server cloning. The result was a higher overall utilization of the network infrastructure, but resulted in only 2 additional servers required to fully-protect all of the "mission-critical" applications.

Its a lot more work, but the resulting price tag of the overall project is much easier for Finance to swallow.

David Parker
President, Competitive Network Solutions, Inc.