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Disaster Recovery Consulting Services
Disaster Recovery Consulting Services
Disaster Recovery Consulting Services
In case of a catastrophic event, whether natural or man-made, a sound business continuity/disaster recovery (DR/BC) strategy can make the difference between a business glitch and a calamity. Decision Consultants' DR/BC consultants can help small and mid-size companies design and test a contingency plan that incorporates advanced technologies and proven processes to get back in business quickly after a catastrophic network failure while at the same time working within a restricted IT budget.
The terms "business continuity planning" and "disaster recovery planning" are often used interchangeably, but it is useful to distinguish them. Business continuity planning takes a high-level, holistic view of a business to determine what personnel, physical resources, and operational processes are required to keep an organization running at some minimally acceptable level after a catastrophe and how to restore normal operations efficiently. Business continuity planning takes into account information technology issues, which are vital to any business, but also addresses areas beyond computing. Will you need temporary office space? Substitute vehicles? Alternate vendors? Replacement personnel? Do you have an emergency notification system in place to alert workers and other stakeholders? Are you required to file regulatory reports or contact insurers? Do you need access to emergency funding? Decision Consultants can provide the services of experienced consultants who can help you follow best practices to create and document a high-level business continuity plan that deals with these critical questions and provides a cohesive game plan to follow in case of a disaster.
Disaster recovery planning is more focused on information technology issues and involves the down-to-earth details of how to keep your crucial IT operations running, protect your data, and restore full network functionality as quickly as practical. Decision Consultants can provide the services of a certified IT professional who can help you create and implement a disaster recovery plan that utilizes the latest generation of technologies designed to provide a high degree of fault tolerance and recoverability at historically low prices.
It is still relatively rare for small businesses to have a comprehensive business continuity plan in place, but only businesses with an insatiable appetite for risk should go without a disaster recovery plan. Disaster recovery planning should address the IT resources needed to maintain a defined level of operational capability and restore full network functionality as quickly as practical. The plan should anticipate a broad variety of disaster scenarios such as fires, storms, earthquakes, chemical accidents, flooding, pandemics, loss of key personnel, equipment or system failure, human error, and cyber crime.
You should assess the worst-case impact of each of these disaster scenarios on your network infrastructure and business processes and prioritize the areas that are most critical for you to protect in order to limit business disruption to an acceptable level. For each scenario, you should develop a recovery strategy that addresses your local and remote workers, customers, vendors, facilities, hardware and software, communication services, support contracts, and lead-times for replacing equipment and services and restoring data. Your recovery strategies should include specific action plans, escalation procedures, and data retention and restoration policies. You should also test the plan and train your employees responsible for carrying it out.
Decision Consultants has developed an effective and affordable process for helping small business create a viable disaster recovery plan. This process involves seven distinct phases:
In this phase, you differentiate between critical and non-critical organization functions. A function is critical if its loss for any significant period of time would result in damage that stakeholders regard as unacceptable. You can't realistically decide that all network functions are critical because you have to consider the probable cost of establishing and maintaining rapid business or technical recovery solutions. You also have to take into account that some functions may be dictated by law or contractual obligations. Decision Consultants can help you make informed prioritization decisions by assessing the cost and timing issues associated with various recovery strategies.
Once you have identified critical organization functions, you have to establish two values for each function:
The Recovery Point Objective must ensure that the Maximum Tolerable Data Loss for each activity is not exceeded. The Recovery Time Objective must ensure that the Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPD) for each activity is not exceeded.
The Impact and Risk Analysis phase results in the recovery requirements for each critical function. The recovery requirements consist of:
After you complete the Business Impact and Risk Analysis phase, the business and technical plan requirements have to be documented before you can move on to the solution design and implementation phases. Decision Consultants is experienced in generating this vital documentation quickly and can work with your asset management team, if you have one, to identify available and re-allocateable resources you can use for disaster recovery.
The goal of the Solution Design phase is to identify the most cost-effective disaster recovery solution that meets the requirements identified in the Business Impact and Risk Analysis stage. For your critical IT applications, this means determining how the minimum application and application data requirements can be restored within the target timeframe. Disaster recovery plans may also have to address areas beyond IT applications. A common example is the requirement to preserve information in hard copy format. Decision Consultants' expertise with Microsoft and Cisco technology, business application programming and support skills, experience providing Internet data center consulting and network management services, and extensive background helping small business recover from catastrophic network failures ensure that the solutions Decision Consultants proposes take full advantage of advanced technology to keep costs down while maximizing the chances of success.
Key areas defined in the Solution Design phase include:
The Implementation phase is the most important part of a disaster recovery plan and features the execution of the design elements identified in the Solution Design phase. Work package testing may take place during the implementation of the solution. Decision Consultants' skills as system integrators come into play in this phase and help minimize the time and cost required to roll out a viable solution.
Testing and adjusting recovery plans for specific anticipated scenarios is another critical element of a viable disaster recovery program. The complexity of fault-tolerant networks requires rigorous testing to verify that a recovery plan is feasible and that assigned responsibilities are understood. Recovery exercises will show whether backed-up data can be usefully restored, alternative connectivity technology provides adequate performance under realistic loads, fault-tolerant technologies perform failover processes as planned, and IT staff knows what is expected. Testing exercises will help you identify weak points in your recovery plan so you can make adjustments before disaster strikes. Decision Consultants' experience with system design and support ensure that the Testing and Verification phase of a disaster recover plan is thorough and meaningful without being unnecessarily protracted and costly.
The primary areas involved in the Testing and Verification phase of a business continuity plan include:
The key questions that are addressed during the Testing and Verification phase of a disaster recovery plan include:
In this phase you resolve any issues or concerns that arose during the Testing and Verification phase. Any changes in the solution design that come about during this phase should be reflected in the associated disaster recovery documents. Decision Consultants' experience with disaster recovery solution design and implementation help keep test failures at a minimum and speed up remediation, saving clients time and money.
The handover of a turnkey disaster recovery solution includes three activities:
The first activity in the Handover phase is to confirm the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in the written manual and the distribution of the documentation to the client's staff. Staff members whose roles are identified as critical for disaster response and recovery are provided training to ensure that they understand what they are expected to do and know how to do it.
The second activity is testing and verification of technical solutions established for recovery operations.
The third activity is an all-hands testing and verification of documented organization recovery procedures.
Decision Consultants' Microsoft and Cisco-certified consulting experts can assist your company to build an affordable, fault-tolerant IT architecture that addresses critical challenges covering a broad array of networking solutions and operations such as:
Non-stop Internet Access. Decision Consultants' Cisco-certified IT consultants can show you how to design an economical, high availability Internet connection architecture that can achieve 24×7 Internet connectivity via a broad array of fault tolerant Internet network solutions including high availability BGP, transparent fail-over, and redundant ISPs. Decision Consultants can provide Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert consultants to show you how to apply the latest techniques for fault tolerant Internet connectivity to implement an economical, fully redundant Internet network with automatic failover and other capabilities to create zero-downtime Internet connections. For more information, visit Non-stop Internet Connectivity Architecture.
Server Virtualization. Virtualization technology is a key part of any up-to-date disaster recovery strategy. Virtual servers can be configured, updated, replicated, and restored rapidly and easily, providing a degree of versatility for ensuring high-availability impossible to match with physical servers. Decision Consultants can assist your company to design and deploy a virtual server environment powered by Microsoft Windows Hyper-V, which incorporates advanced business continuity capabilities that include online system backup and live migration. Hyper-V can save much of the time and effort needed for scheduled maintenance, switching to hot backup sites, and recovering normal network functions. For more details, visit Windows Hyper-V Virtual Server Consulting.
Microsoft Server 2008 Clusters. The cluster feature set incorporated into the Datacenter and Enterprise versions of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 has been dramatically re-engineered to simplify the deployment, configuration, and management of server clusters that offer improved levels of system availability, security, performance, and flexibility. New or improved features include cluster verification, easier setup and installation, improved cluster management, new cluster infrastructure for maximum availability, better protection and quorum structure, elimination of failure points, greater disk and memory capacity, and enhancements for geographically dispersed clusters. For details, visit Windows Failover Clustering Support.
High Availability Load Balancing. Decision Consultants offers fault tolerant load balancing support covering system load balancing, load balanced applications, LAN/WAN infrastructure routing, and content delivery technology such as F5 Networks 3DNS. High availability load balancing technologies for which Decision Consultants can provide consulting services include Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Access Suite and Presentation Server, Cisco CSS, Cisco Distributed Director and Cisco CDN Software, and F5 Networks BIG-IP. For more information, go to Fault Tolerant Load Balancing.
Fault Tolerant Colocation. Decision Consultants' Data Center consultants can show you how to select zero-downtime data centers that match the particular requirements of your company. High availability colocation sites are particularly appealing to small companies because of their affordability and simplified logistics compared to pursuing a do-it-yourself approach. Trying to create an in-house data center that offers even a basic level of fault tolerance is financially prohibitive for typical small businesses. Decision Consultants is ready to help you reap all the advantages of 24×7 Internet data centers by offering a complete range of engineering and support services. For details, see High-Availability Colocation Expertise.
Fault Tolerant Branch Office Connectivity. Decision Consultants’interoffice connection consultants can help small companies create fault tolerant interoffice connectivity through fully redundant system architectures featuring automatic failover. Decision Consultants’ Cisco-qualified CCIE engineers can design and deploy high-availability Inter-office connections supported by non-stop EIGRP network routers or zero-downtime OSPF configurations of Cisco routers. Decision Consultants can show you how multi-path connectivity and transparent fail-over offers economical 24×7 interoffice networking. For more information, visit Failsafe Inter-office Networking.
Data Protection Manager Backup and Restore Consulting and Support Services. Decision Consultants' expert Data Protection Manager support professionals can help your company to create a practical business continuity plan, implement an affordable fault-tolerant IT architecture, install a DPM-powered backup and restore system, thoroughly test your system, train your IT staff or regular consultants how to manage DPM, or provide complete IT support outsourcing including off-site hosting of Data Protection Manager servers in Decision Consultants' data center. To find out more, visit Microsoft DPM Expertise.
Since Decision Consultants is a Microsoft Gold Partner and offers high-level application consulting for a broad variety of small business applications, Decision Consultants can help clients to find efficient information technology solutions that maximize the business value of your IT network. As a Registered Partner for Cisco Systems, Decision Consultants can provide the services of certified engineers and specialists with experience in architecting, configuring and troubleshooting networking solutions built on Cisco Systems products. The broad scope of Decision Consultants' IT know-how and Decision Consultants' familiarity with the requirements of small and midsize companies make Decision Consultants the ideal resource for building and maintaining a cost-effective, dependable information system.
In order to get in touch with Decision Consultants about consulting support for workplace recovery solutions, call (866) 666-7731 or send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it