Below are our suggested reads for this week on our Neverfail Bulletin:

• Disaster Happens, How to Protect Your Business

This article, from Fox Small Business Center reminds us that disasters can strike at any time and that having a disaster recovery plan is imperative for all small business.

• Differing American, Canadian plans for using Cloud for data protection

This report from CA Technologies cited that more than half (55%) of U.S. organizations expect their use of the cloud to increase as part of their business continuity strategy over the next year. On the reverse side, only 25% of Canadian businesses that were surveyed reported they will be using cloud service for data protection.

• Waking up to the threat of natural

This article from The Nation cites a report that demonstrated the significant impact natural catastrophes had throughout the world last year. In total, these catastrophes cost upwards of $336 billion in damages, the highest on record. Despite this reality, many businesses and residents still have not come to terms with the actual growing threat of these disasters.

• Top Storage Tips for SME/SMB

Virtual Strategy Magazine gives out the top tips on storage strategies. With companies facing ever-shrinking IT budgets, the biggest challenge is to flexibility and resiliency with their data platforms.

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Image by watcharakun

Fast Track is an internationally renowned sports marketing agency working in tandem with large UK sporting and athletics clients. The company has an unrivalled reputation for delivering impactful and measurable events, both in the UK and across International territories.

In May 2012, a series of events is set to take place, including the BT Paralympics World Cup and the Sainsbury’s 2012 School Games. These events will demand meticulous levels of organization and planning from Fast Track’s IT team to ensure the necessary technology is in place to guarantee the business delivers on the day and does not fall at the last hurdle.

Fast Track’s communications infrastructure underpins all daily routines and interactions with third-party suppliers, designers, health and safety officers and contractors. Without uninterrupted connectivity that fuels interactions with these partners, events can be severely jeopardised – particularly when broadcast live.

The “May Mission”

Fast Track and its partners face a huge task when helping to organise several televised sporting showcases.  Ahead of the events in May this year, the “May Mission” will begin.  This involves close collaboration between IT, internal marketing and external teams to firm-up all groundwork and back-office procedures to ensure everything goes to plan.

2-3 months in advance: First out of the starting block is a job for the IT team.  All data entered into what is termed the “results system” needs to be checked and double checked. This is essentially a large network of databases and spreadsheets which frame start lists, events and athletes schedules. Once these fundamentals are ironed out, third-party contractors, health and safety officers and PR teams can begin their work to produce and promote each event accordingly. This entails a lot of back-and-forth between each team to determine roles and responsibilities, covering all bases and pre-empting last minute changes.  Fast Track’s communication arsenal is central to ensuring all global contracts are signed, plans drawn up and documents exchanged on an ongoing basis. All parties are operating to strict deadlines in the run up to these high-profile events and cannot afford a breakdown in critical communications infrastructure. This is particularly crucial as over 70% of Fast Track’s workforce relies on BlackBerry devices to communicate from various global locations.

14 days to go: The IT team is tasked with determining the specific IT equipment needed on-site which can include the necessary broadband cables, printers and desktops which form the communications hub that employees and partners use to exchange emails on-site and when making last-minute preparations.

Magnus Leask, Head of IT at Fast Track explains “The sheer number of conversations that the IT team and marketing departments have prior to these events is extortionate, and if we did not have our Microsoft Exchange and BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) applications running continuously we would be dead in the water.”

7 days to go: Fast Track’s IT team then has to conduct due diligence on its business continuity plan to ensure that, in the event of a disaster or service interruption, critical processes will continue to operate without a hitch.  If anything does go wrong during a live event, future contracts could be jeopardised, together with negative impact to business reputation and significant hits to the balance sheet.  Projects of this scale require services which build resilience into Fast Track’s infrastructure, counteracting any communication problems that can result from power outages, natural disasters and hardware failure.

Neverfail Receives a Gold Medal

Fast Track deployed Neverfail technology to protect its critical communications applications against downtime back in 2007. Neverfail maintains a clone of the email and BlackBerry servers on a VMware server at the disaster recovery site. Given the emphasis Fast Track places on round-the-clock availability, the technology is at the core of all operations.  Fast Track’s primary data centre is located in its London headquarters, while its disaster recovery site is housed in Maidenhead.  During live broadcasts, in the event that downtime occurs due to hardware failure, power outage or natural disaster, Neverfail seamlessly fails over the email and BlackBerry servers to the secondary location.

The significance of testing and implementing this failover process came into full force when power outages in Central London in July 2010 resulted in the automatic failover of the Microsoft Exchange and BES environments to the DR site. This power cut clashed with the Aviva UK Athletics London Grand Prix which was being broadcast live on the BBC at the time. With Neverfail, operations were automatically failed over for the duration of the event and critical IT ran from the secondary location instead of the primary headquarters.  Because Fast Track had conducted frequent DR tests, this outage did not curb communications when used “in anger” and employees were able to continue their work on the ground without any problems.

The Verdict

“Without Neverfail technology in the lead-up to and during these events, we would be in trouble. Neverfail just works when we need it to and is a strategic partner to our business,” says Magnus Leask. “Back in 2010 during the Grand Prix, its exemplary performance in guaranteeing our critical applications remained operational from the DR site was admirable and the solution definitely proved its worth in delivering exceptional ROI for the business.”

“The month of May will be a busy one for us, and the IT team will be under a lot of pressure to deliver.  Neverfail is an invaluable crutch to lean on if anything were to go wrong once we are in the thick of it. This provides us with a deep assurance that all our hard work will not go to waste and the business will continue to thrive in high pressure situations.”

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The preceding case study can be found in its original format here.

Below are our suggested reads for this week on our Neverfail Bulletin:

• Embrace Your Data And Keep it Safe

In this article, Computer Technology Review discusses the importance of network security. Yet, as companies spend millions of dollars on network security, they often skimp out on preventative business continuity measures. The article cites research from Forrester which demonstrates that the number one impact on data loss for businesses is power failure, which could not be prevented by network security.

• Small Businesses Embrace Disaster Preparedness

The Fox Small Business Center reports on how it’s not just large businesses that are looking to cutting-edge technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing and mobile devices to beef up their disaster preparedness capabilities.

• Disaster Recovery Is A Success Just Waiting To Happen

An opinion piece from Computerworld  examines how four of today’s technology megatrends- virtualization, cloud, mobile, and social – should be incorporated into any business continuity and disaster preparedness planning.

• The Business Case for Continuity Planning

This article from GovInfo Security discusses how global small and mid-size businesses must focus their efforts on developing a fool-proof continuity plan. As more businesses face environmental disasters and consequences from our energy needs, the need to back-up data is imperative.

Below are our suggested reads for this week on our Neverfail Bulletin:

• Lessons from Mother Nature

MSPmentor reported on the effects of environmental disasters on data recovery and business continuity. According to a report by the Aberdeen Group, 48% of small businesses and 46% of medium-sized businesses cited power outages as their main cause of data loss.

• Moving Forward: Data Center Modernization

Data Center Modernization is becoming a cornerstone of a majority of IT budgets. According to research firm IDC, 70% of activity and budget is spent on tasks that keep business running. As virtualization continues to be a game changer in terms of data management, companies are faced with the task of virtualizing their data while also protecting against system failures.

• Dynamic data centres for the new age

This ITWeb article discusses how traditional data centers are unable to adequately handle the fast-evolving data requirements of today. Yet, many industries are taking on the daunting task of reorganizing their data centers in hopes of achieving business continuity and cost-saving measures.

• The pros and cons of cloud backups for storage resellers

Forrester Research discusses the pros and cons of cloud backup in comparison to tape backup.  The research demonstrates that certain companies are good candidates for cloud backups, and how the cloud is able to ensure business continuity. Yet, many companies have trouble putting their hard earned data into virtual locations due to a lack of confidence in the applications and understanding about virtualization.

Ashwin’s vast industry experience will serve him well in his new role at Neverfail. He joins the Neverfail team from VMware, where he served in a number of key product management roles that spanned server virtualization, cloud infrastructure, datacenter automation, and business continuity.  Most recently, he served as Staff Product Manager for VMware’s Business Continuity suite, successfully driving larger volumes of adoption and penetration into smaller market segments.

Prior to joining Neverfail and VMware, he served in various network and IT management roles at Hitachi Data Systems, an information technologies, services, and solutions provider, and Navin Communications, a voice messaging solutions company. Ashwin earned his MBA from San Jose State University and his BS in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering from University of Mumbai in India.

We are excited to have him on board, and look forward to continuing Neverfail’s tradition of providing our customers with best-in-class continuity and disaster recovery solutions.

Below are our suggested reads for this week on our Neverfail Bulletin:

• The NFL thrives on big, except in IT

This Computerworld article discusses how despite the fact that the NFL is known for having big stadiums, big players, and big games, their IT operation is done on a smaller scale. The NFL’s IT goal is to keep operational costs flat to meet the demand of new services. To keep costs low, the NFL has virtualized 95% of its servers without having to expand hardware usage.

• Study: Cloud Computing Cuts $5.5 Billion Annually From Federal Budget

CRN reports that the federal government has saved about $5.5 billion annually by moving cloud services, but had opportunities to save close to $12 billion had they taken more aggressive measures. The top cost saving measures implemented included: data center consolidation, cloud computing, big data, and bring-your-own-device.

• Virtualization Gets A Second Opinion From Health Care IT

Previously uninterested in virtualization, over the past few years the health care industry has begun implementing virtualization strategies. Studies report that nearly every health care provider over 150 beds has some form of virtualization in its IT ecosystem.

• 2 Virtualization Worries That Keep Admins Up At Night

When IT administrators were polled, GCN reported that system downtime and slow application performance related to storage in virtualized environments are the administrators’ primary IT concerns.  Although companies are allocating more of their budget to storage and virtualization, the funds appear to have not reduced performance concerns.

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News image by watcharakun

When a hot new technology touting such great benefits emerges, it can be tempting to jump right out of the gate without carefully considering the requirements to deploy it within your organization. But this can be dangerous to your business. When making the decision to virtualize, don’t do it with blinders on. There are several things to consider when transitioning from physical to virtual, especially as it relates to disaster recovery. Let’s take a look at four of them.

1)    Plan your resources effectively. Application performance can suffer if any one resource is over-allocated. This can affect your DR plans as well. Bottlenecks arise from many different sources, including CPU, disk I/O, RAM and bandwidth. Therefore, if you’re going to virtualize, you should make sure that you have the capacity and resources to do it without risking the degradation of your resources.

2)    Plan for failures. In the event of a disaster, the speed with which you recover depends not only on the recovery tools that you’ve put in place, but also on the failures for which you’ve planned. Perhaps you’ve planned for a large-scale disaster, but haven’t given consideration to an application being down due to planned maintenance. It’s important to note that not all disaster recovery solutions protect you from all sources of downtime. Don’t let the ease of VM image mobility trick you into a false sense of security.

3)    Evaluate dependencies. Applications rarely exist on single servers. More often, there are interdependencies between servers that need to be considered. Be sure to map out all components of an application or service, and make sure that all parts are equally protected in a disaster. They should – at the very least – be protected enough to meet your agreed SLAs.

4)    Understand requirements. Virtualization tools promise many capabilities, and you need to make sure you have the resources to take advantage of them. For example, planning DR around moving images, and then discovering that you’re not able to move images quickly enough really throws a wrench into your DR plans. Make sure you understand exactly what is required of any solution, and ensure that you are able to meet those requirements.

When done correctly, virtualization promises great benefits and return on investment. However, when done incorrectly, it can have a tremendously negative impact on your business. Disaster recovery planning for a virtualized world is no different (see Five things that out-of-the-box DR tools can’t provide). Just like with anything new, successfully running a virtual environment just takes planning, a bit of patience, and having the right tools to do the job.

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Server image by renjith krishnan

With this in mind, it is critical that organizations plan not just for their virtualized infrastructure, but for their hybrid environments—until they are 100% virtualized. And in the meantime, for these virtual/physical infrastructures, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to disaster recovery.

There are tremendous advantages that virtualization brings when it comes to disaster recovery. Lower costs, greater automation… the same benefits we already mentioned. But if companies still have physical servers in the mix, they can face a conundrum.

Many virtualization solutions for disaster recovery do not have capabilities to protect physical servers in addition to the virtualized ones. This means you can’t truly ensure business continuity in the event of a disaster using only these solutions… especially if your physical servers are holding those critical tier-1 applications that run your business.

On the other hand, trying to protect those physical servers on their own leaves you looking at multiple business continuity solutions. Maintaining multiple solutions can greatly increase costs, thereby wiping out a major benefit of deploying virtualization in the first place.

So how to proceed?

• Do your research. Moving to virtualization can bring great benefits, but rather than just jumping on the virtualized bandwagon because it’s the hot trend, evaluate how it will fit into your business in a careful and considered manner.

• Investigate solutions. You don’t have to have different disaster recovery solutions for your two environments, despite what you may hear. There are solutions that exist to protect the hybrid environment.

• Look for ease of use. You’re moving to virtualization because it’s easier and saves time and money. Your disaster recovery solution should be easy and cost-effective too. Solutions that integrate well with multiple platforms will save you headaches and help ensure business continuity when you need it most.

Ask yourself if your physical servers still have critical business applications running on them. If the answer is yes, it could be critical to your business that you protect them.

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“Clocks” image by Salvatore Vuono

• When Disaster Strikes

In an April 16^th article, The Worcester Business Journal discusses how businesses must plan for business continuity prior to obstacles such as natural disasters. Meticulous plans that are executed successfully can save a company’s future.

• Business Continuity- Home Working During the Olympics

Alan Cairns (@n01d34) reports what some London businesses will be doing to maintain business continuity during the upcoming 2012 summer Olympic Games.

• Virtualization Backup Is No Longer Niche

Most companies now have 90% of their servers virtualized, thus making virtualization the mainstream and physical backup servers the new niche.

There’s no doubt that the cloud is one of the most prevalent trends in computing today. Microsoft stats show that 30% of SMBs currently use some cloud services, with another 48% expecting to add cloud services in the next 2 to 3 years. With cloud computing becoming much more mainstream among the SMB crowd, it’s now time to make sure that the cloud can support an organization’s computing needs and service requirements in the event that something goes wrong. And unfortunately, as it stands right now, the cloud might not be up to the task of hosting a company’s critical services.

One problem is that SMBs figure there is safety in numbers. If they throw more and more services into the cloud, and if more and more companies are also doing so, there must be a measure of protection against service outages, right? Unfortunately, these companies are not taking into account that there are weak links that still exist.

One major weak link today is how users configure virtual machines. If these machines are not configured correctly, it will result in errors that have a ripple effect on services that run on the machine. The growing number of machines – both physical and virtual – within organizations is contributing to a greater number of configuration errors. Quite simply, with more machines to configure, there is more that can go wrong.

To combat this issue, companies should take a few steps:

• Automate more and more tasks in order to keep up with the growth in machines;
• Employ application-level monitoring, which will help alert organizations to application availability degradation; and
• Not depend completely on just one provider of cloud services. In the foreseeable future, it would be wise for firms to run their high availability services locally, while using the cloud for disaster recovery.

Even if companies tackle these issues, a self-healing cloud is still five years away. It’s not enough for organizations to just throw their applications into the cloud and expect everything will be safe. Just as with a physical infrastructure, it requires planning and assessment to make sure any cloud deployment fits the company’s needs and service requirements.

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Cloud image by basketman