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Key aspects for ensuring business continuity in data centers

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Business continuity in data centers during crisis situations

Events like the heavy snowfall provoked by Storm Filomena in Madrid last January or the coronavirus pandemic we are facing have highlighted the importance of business continuity . Contingency and Disaster Recovery (DR) planning is simply essential for critical infrastructures like data centers, but not only. In the digital economy, DR planning has become indispensable for virtually any organisation; in light of the increase of cyberattacks, the adverse effects of climate change, etc.

As their services are critical to many organizations and essential sectors, data centers are experts in service continuity and disaster recovery planning . So, any company can learn a lot from their expertise. That is why, after the heavy snowfall, we talked to Equinix — one of the data centers where Stackscale has infrastructure — to know more about how they managed such an unusual situation in Madrid. From their experience, we have gathered some key aspects for ensuring business continuity in data centers during crisis situations .

Anticipation and coordination

Proactivity, communication and coordination are key. As we explain in our article about designing a DR plan , defining a clear protocol of action is vital for ensuring that, when the time comes, the plan can be executed smoothly. After all, activating the protocols established for crisis situations is the first step in case of an emergency.

Equinix’s Director of Facility Operations in Spain, Juan Romero, explains that one of their first actions, in the light of Storm Filomena, was to contact the corresponding public authorities to ensure the data center entrance’s clean up was prioritized. At the same time they anticipated the necessary equipment for removing snow as well as food and beverages for the employees that remained in the facilities.

Teams’ availability and organization

Technical and security teams always play an important role; but especially during crisis situations. That is why, during the heavy snowfall in Madrid, one of the main Equinix’s actions was to accommodate essential employees in nearby hotels in order to guarantee infrastructure and service continuity . Apart from technical and security staff, data centers also reinforced staff for shoveling snow on the rooftop — where the mechanical shovels could not access.

System monitoring and control reinforcement

Managing, maintaining and monitoring the infrastructure is part of the daily work in any data center. To monitor their long list of critical parameters, data centers rely on automation . This way, they can quickly notice if there is any issue and can easily control that no event disrupts the infrastructure . 

System monitoring and control become even more critical during crisis situations and are, therefore, reinforced. Technicians must be especially attentive to any anomaly or disruption an unusual situation might provoke . In Equinix data centers in Madrid , for instance, systems were checked every 30 minutes during the heavy snowfall. Since, although it might be common in other locations, Madrid hadn’t experienced such a snowfall for decades.

To sum up, when facing an emergency situation, not only is it important to have the right resources, but also to properly coordinate them in order to be fully prepared for any contingency.

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Published: 21 December 2023 Contributors: Mesh Flinders, Ian Smalley

Business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR) refers to a process that helps organizations return to normal business operations in the event of a disaster. While the terms business continuity and  disaster recovery  are closely related, they describe two subtly different approaches to crisis management that businesses can take.

As data loss prevention and downtime become more and more expensive, many organizations are upping their investment in emergency management. In 2023, companies worldwide are poised to spend USD 219 billion on cybersecurity and solutions, a 12% increase from last year  according to a recent report by the International Data Corporation (IDC)  (link resides outside ibm.com).

What is a disaster recovery plan?

A  disaster recovery plan (DRP)  is a contingency plan for how an enterprise will recover from an unexpected event. Alongside business continuity plans (BCPs), DR plans help businesses navigate different disaster scenarios, such as massive outages, natural disasters,  ransomware  and  malware  attacks, and many others.

What is a business continuity plan?

Like DRPs, business continuity plans (BCPs) play a critical role in disaster recovery, helping organizations return to normal business functions in the event of a disaster. Where a DRP focusses specifically on IT systems, business continuity management focusses more broadly on various aspects of preparedness.

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Most organizations divide BCDR planning into two separate processes: business continuity and disaster recovery. This is an effective approach because while the two processes share many steps, there are also key differences in how the plans are built, implemented and tested.

The primary difference is that BCPs tend to be proactive, while DRPs tend to be more reactive. It’s good to keep this in mind when building the two parts of your BCDR plan because it governs how the two processes relate to each other. A strong business continuity strategy focuses on processes, procedures and roles that are critical to business operations before, during and immediately following a disaster. DR planning is more geared towards reacting to an incident and taking appropriate actions to recover from it. 

Both processes depend heavily on two critical components, recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO):

  • Recovery time objective (RTO):  RTO refers to the amount of time it takes to restore business processes after an unplanned incident. Establishing a reasonable RTO is one of the first things businesses need do when they’re creating their DRP. 
  • Recovery point objective (RPO):  Your business’ RPO is the amount of data it can afford to lose in a disaster and still recover. Since data protection is a core capability of many modern enterprises, some constantly copy data to a remote  data center  to ensure continuity in case of a massive breach. Others set a tolerable RPO of a few minutes (or even hours) for business data to be recovered from a backup system and know they will be able to recover from whatever was lost during that time.

1.    Conduct business impact analysis (BIA)

To build an effective BCP, you’ll first need to understand the various risks your organization faces. Business impact analysis (BIA) plays a crucial role in risk management and business resilience. BIA is the process of identifying and evaluating the potential impact of a disaster on normal operations. Strong BIA includes an overview of all potential existing threats and vulnerabilities—internal and external—as well as detailed plans for mitigation. Additionally, the BIA must identify the likelihood of an event occurring so the organization can prioritize accordingly.

2.    Design responses

Once your BIA is complete, the next step in building your BCP is planning effective responses to each of the threats you’ve identified. Different threats will naturally require different disaster recovery strategies, so each of your responses should have a detailed plan for how the organization will spot a specific threat and address it.

3.    Identify key roles and responsibilities

This step dictates how key members of your team will respond when facing a crisis or disruptive event. It documents expectations for each team member as well as the resources required for them to fulfill their roles. This is a good part of the process to consider how individuals will communicate in the event of an incident. Some threats will shut down key networks—such as cellular or internet connectivity—so it’s important to have fallback methods of communication your employees can rely on.

4.    Test and update your plan

To be actionable, you need to constantly practice and refine your BCDR plan. Constant testing and training of employees will lead to a seamless deployment when an actual disaster strikes. Rehearse realistic scenarios like cyberattacks, fires, floods, human error, massive outages and other relevant threats so team members can build confidence in their roles and responsibilities.

Like BCPs, DRPs require business impact analysis (BIA)—the outlining of roles and responsibilities and constant testing and refinement. But because DRPs are more reactive in nature, there is more of a focus on risk analysis and  data backup and recovery . Steps 2 and 3 of DRP development, performing risk analysis (RA) and creating an asset inventory are not part of the BCP development process at all. 

Here's a widely used five-step process for creating a DRP:

1.    Conduct business impact analysis

Like in your BCP process, start by assessing each threat your company could face and what its ramifications might be. Consider how potential threats might impact daily operations, regular communication channels and worker safety. Additional considerations for a strong BIA include loss of revenue, cost of downtime, cost of reputational repair (public relations), loss of customers and investors (short and long term) and any incurred penalties from compliance violations.

2.    Analyze risks

DRPs typically require more careful risk assessment than BCPs since their role is to focus on recovery efforts from a potential disaster. During the risk analysis (RA) portion of planning, consider a risk’s likelihood and potential impact on your business.

3.    Create an asset inventory

To create an effective DRP, you must know exactly what your enterprise owns, its purpose/function and its condition. Doing regular asset inventory helps identify hardware, software, IT infrastructure and anything else your organization might own that is crucial to your business operations. Once you’ve identified your assets, you can group them into three categories— critical, important  and  unimportant:

  • Critical:  Only label assets as critical if they are required for normal business operations.
  • Important:  Give this label to assets that are used at least once a day and, if disrupted, would have an impact on business operations (but not shut them down entirely).
  • Unimportant:  These are assets your business uses infrequently that are not essential for normal business operations.

4.    Establish roles and responsibilities

Just like in your BCP development, you’ll need to clearly outline responsibilities and ensure team members have what they need to perform their required duties. Without this crucial step, no one will know how to act during a disaster. Here are some roles and responsibilities to consider when building your DRP:

  • Incident reporter:  Someone who maintains contact information for relevant parties and communicates with business leaders and stakeholders when disruptive events occur.
  • DRP supervisor:  The DRP supervisor ensures team members perform the tasks they’ve been assigned during an incident. 
  • Asset manager:  Someone whose job it is to secure and protect critical assets when a disaster strikes. 
  • Third-party liaison:  The person who coordinates with any third-party vendors or service providers you’ve hired as part of your DRP and updates stakeholders accordingly on how the DRP is going.

5.    Test and refine

Like your BCP, your DRP requires constant practice and refinement to be effective. Practice it regularly and update it according to any meaningful changes that need to be made. For example, if your company acquires a new asset after your DRP has been formed, you’ll need to incorporate it into your plan to ensure it's protected going forward.

When it comes to BCDR planning, every business is going to have its own unique set of needs. Here are a few examples of plans that have proven effective for companies of differing sizes and industries:

  • Crisis management plan:  A crisis management plan, also known as an incident management plan, is a detailed plan for managing a specific incident. It provides detailed instructions on how your organization will respond to a specific kind of crisis, such as a power outage, cyberattack or natural disaster.
  • Communications plan:  A communications plan outlines how your organization will handle public relations (PR) in the event of a disaster. Business leaders typically coordinate with communications specialists to formulate communications plans that complement any crisis management activities needed to keep business operations going during an unplanned incident.
  • Data center recovery plan : A data center recovery plan focuses on the security of a data center facility and its ability to get back up and running after an unplanned incident. Some common threats to data storage include overstretched personnel that can result in human error, cyberattacks, power outages and difficulty following compliance requirements. 
  • Network recovery plan:  Network recovery plans help organizations recover from an interruption of network services, including internet access, cellular data, local area networks (LAN) and wide area networks (WAN). Given the importance of many networked services to business operations, network recovery plans must clearly outline the steps, roles and responsibilities needed to restore services quickly and effectively when a network has been compromised.
  • Virtualized recovery plan:  A virtualized recovery plan  relies on virtual machine (VM) instances that can be ready to operate within a couple of minutes of an interruption. Virtual machines are representations, or emulations, of physical computers that provide critical application recovery through high availability (HA), or the ability of a system to operate continuously without failing.

BCDR planning helps organizations better understand the threats they face and better prepare to face them. Enterprises that don’t undertake BCDR planning face a variety of risks, including data loss, downtime, financial penalties and reputational damage. Effective BCDR planning helps ensure business continuity and the prompt restoration of services in the event of a business disruption. Here are some of the benefits companies with strong BCDR planning enjoy:

When an unplanned incident disrupts business as usual, it can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Additionally, high-profile cyberattacks frequently attract unwanted attention in the press and can result in loss of confidence in both customers and investors. BCDR plans increase an organization’s ability get back up and running swiftly and smoothly after an unplanned incident.

According to  IBM’s recent Cost of Data Breach Report , the average cost of a data breach in 2023 was USD 4.45 million, a 15% increase over the last 3 years. Enterprises with strong BCDR can reduce those costs by helping maintain business continuity throughout an incident and speeding recovery afterwards. Another opportunity for cost-savings with strong BCDR is in cyber insurance. Many insurers simply won’t ensure organizations that don’t have a strong BCDR plan in place.

Data breaches incur hefty fines when private customer information is compromised. Businesses that operate in heavily regulated sectors like healthcare and personal finance face especially costly penalties. Since these penalties are often tied to the duration and severity of a breach, maintaining business continuity and shortening response and recovery lifecycles is critical to keeping financial penalties low.

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To formulate a business continuity plan we must first outline what makes a successful business continuity plan.  A data center’s business continuity plan will function as a roadmap.  If a disaster strikes, you will hopefully be able to find the type of disaster in your business continuity plan and then begin following the “map” to get to the solution and restore your data center to business as usual. First and foremost, a proper business continuity plan will focus on what can be done to prevent disasters so that business continuity is never interrupted in the first place. Data centers must consider what their unique needs are because there is no such thing as a generic data center business continuity plan – it would never work.  Data centers must identify and asses all mission critical assets and risks.  Once they have been identified it will be far easier to formulate a business continuity plan with specific goals in mind.  You can prioritize your most problematic risks by focusing on the risk they pose to mission critical assets. In considering individual needs it is imperative that data centers determine what applications and processes are mission critical. For example, you’re your mission critical systems be maintained remotely? Additionally, in today’s data center world where security is a top concern, maintaining data security should be an important part of your business continuity plan.

Disaster prevention is a central part of your data center’s business continuity plan.  Identifying business continuity goals and potential problem areas will help you lay out a proper disaster prevention plan.  Depending on your unique data center, certain measures may be beneficial such as increased inspections of infrastructure, better surveillance, enhanced security in various areas including data centers grounds security and rack-based security, increased redundancy, and more.  Think in terms of real problems and real consequences; be specific so that you can make specific business continuity plans and strategies.

Some data centers may want to relocate their data center if a disaster is incredibly large but the logistics of this are far from simple.  Relocating for a disaster safely, rapidly, and securely is no simple task.  And, beyond that, it is expensive which is why many data centers – even large enterprise data centers – do not do this.  To do this properly as part of a business continuity plan, a detailed data center migration plan must accompany the business continuity plan.  Some enterprises may want to utilize regionally diverse data centers that mirror each other but this is also expensive and exceptionally complex to implement – though it can be very effective at maintaining uptime, maximizing security, and optimizing business continuity.

As mentioned, redundancy is an important part of maximizing uptime and maintaining business continuity in a data center. As part of your data center’s business continuity plan, you may want to implement load balancing and link load balancing.  Server load balancing and link load balancing are two strategies that may be used to help prevent the loss of data from an overload or outage in a data center. Continuity Central Archive explains how these two strategies can be used in data centers, “Server load balancing ensures application availability, facilitates tighter application integration, and intelligently and adaptively load balances user traffic based on a suite of application metrics and health checks. It also load balances IPS/IDS devices and composite IP-based applications, and distributes HTTP(S) traffic based on headers and SSL certificate fields. The primary function of server load balancing is to provide availability for applications running within traditional data centers, public cloud infrastructure or a private cloud. Should a server or other networking device become over-utilized or cease to function properly, the server load balancer redistributes traffic to healthy systems based on IT-defined parameters to ensure a seamless experience for end users…Link load balancing addresses WAN reliability by directing traffic to the best performing links. Should one link become inaccessible due to a bottleneck or outage, the ADC takes that link out of service, automatically directing traffic to other functioning links. Where server load balancing provides availability and business continuity for applications and infrastructure running within the data center, link load balancing ensures uninterrupted connectivity from the data center to the Internet and telecommunications networks. Link load balancing may be used to send traffic over whichever link or links prove to be most cost-effective for a given time period. What’s more, link load balancing may be used to direct select user groups and applications to specific links to ensure bandwidth and availability for business critical functions.”

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In addition to the cloud, many data centers opt to implement image-based backup for continuity.  Data Center Knowledge provides a helpful description of what image-based backup is and how it can be used uniquely in data centers, “Hybrid, image-based backup is at the core of successful business continuity solutions today. A hybrid solution combines the quick restoration benefits of local backup with the off-site, economic advantages of a cloud resource. Data is first copied and stored on a local device, so that enterprises can do fast and easy restores from that device. At the same time, the data is replicated in the cloud, creating off-site copies that don’t have to be moved physically. Channel partners are also helping enterprises make a critical shift from file-based backup to image-based. With file-based backup, the IT team chooses which files to back up, and only those files are saved. If the team overlooks an essential file and a disaster occurs, that file is gone. With image-based backup, the enterprise can capture an image of the data in its environment. You can get exact replications of what is stored on a server — including the operating system, configurations and settings, and preferences. Make sure to look for a solution that automatically saves each image-based backup as a virtual machine disk (VMDK), both in the local device and the cloud. This will ensure a faster virtualization process.”

While not every data center will experience a “major” disaster where they cannot get into their facility for weeks, many data centers will experience some type of disaster.  And, as mentioned, mere minutes can cost tens of thousands of dollars.  Beyond the bottom line, the inability to continuously maintain data center business may damage your reputation irreparably.  An effective business continuity plan is capable of pivoting around both people and processes depending on the specific circumstances.  Rapidly restoring data and operations is the goal and data centers should take that goal and work backwards from there to determine the best path to maintaining business continuity.

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6 Essential Elements of Business Continuity and Data Recovery Planning

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Business Risk Assessment

Every IT Manager should perform a business risk assessment for each key infrastructure that is responsible for the management, maintenance, and/or storage of data, be it cloud, or on-prem. An assessment should define, and identify the importance that data repositories play in housing critical data within an organization. The assessment should also define and document the disaster contingency and recovery plan for each manager’s area of responsibility. Questions that plan should answer include:

  • What are the key business processes?
  • What are the applicable risks to availability?
  • What is our prioritization of recovery?

Contingency Plans

Businesses must have a contingency plan documented in the event that hardware, software or networks become dysfunctional or simply go down. This plan should explain the nature of the system unavailability in the event of an outage, and should detail a predetermined recovery process that will be implemented to regain operation. The contingency plan should describe, if necessary, off-site computer operations or temporary hardware or software use. Businesses should test regularly, and review this plan for updates to technology or other circumstances that may change.

Consider Disaster Recovery as a Service

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is an approach to data recovery that has gained popularity over the years. Based in the cloud, DRaaS has many capabilities that traditional disaster recovery does not, including cost-effectiveness, and scalability. DRaaS vendor, Acronis explains how their solution works, stating:

“It will back up and replicate your systems into an on-site appliance and Acronis cloud data center. In case of outage, we can recover and restart your systems locally or in our cloud so you can continue providing IT services to your internal and external constituents until you can safely fail back.”

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Data Backup Plans

A Data Backup Plan should define and address, at minimum, the following:

  • Personnel responsible for executing the backup plan, keeping in mind data confidentiality best interests.
  • Construct a schedule that routinely checks systems and backup data. Be advised that, depending on backup and recovery solution provider, the cost of more frequent backup may increase. Make do with your business’ unique budget, as the potential losses as a result of having no plan greatly outweighs any loss you would have with a plan in place.
  • Identify all systems and data lakes that require backup.
  • Develop and detail specific recovery procedures to restore data from backup repositories.

Communication When Systems are Down

In the event of a disaster– if your company’s internet and phones are down, this could throw a major stick-in-the-spokes of business continuity. You must discuss with all employees a plan of action to keep in touch with customers, employees who are off-site, and most importantly, a way to contact emergency services if outgoing lines of communication have shut down. A log of the personal cell phone or landline numbers of key personnel may come in handy, keeping in mind confidentiality requests of course, along with personal email addresses of employees, especially if the business runs it’s own email servers. Develop a plan and make these resources available to those who need them in a predetermined location.

Establishing Timelines

Most importantly, make sure to explore your business’ recovery time objectives. How long is too long before teams are able to recover critical systems when they fail? What financial implications would 5 hours, 10 hours, or 24 hours of downtime mean to your bottom line? With this in mind, establish a recovery time objective (RTO). This is the duration of time within which a business process or system must be restored after an outage, in order to avoid consequences associated with the disruption. Not all stakeholders may understand the impact that downtime can have on a business; that reputation, liability and even jobs are at stake if a team is not hyper-responsive to these emergencies. Make sure your employees know that, in these instances, time equals much more than money.

Disasters are all around us, and businesses need to be prepared for that. Without proper business continuity and data recovery practices in place, organizations will be unable to bounce back, with many eventually failing. Consider these points when beginning the planning process in order to maintain business operations during a disaster.

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This article was written by Tess Hanna on May 10, 2019

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Tess Hanna is an editor and writer at Solutions Review covering Backup and Disaster Recovery, Data Storage, Cloud Computing, and Network Monitoring. Recognized by Onalytica in the 2021 "Who's Who in Data Management," and "Who's Who in Automation" reports. You can contact her at [email protected]

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Business continuity planning enables you to create an easy-to-use, actionable business continuity planning solution to prepare for the impact of a broad range of threats including natural disasters, disease outbreaks, accidents and terrorism. In addition business continuity planning can help when you face technology-related hazards like the failure of systems, equipment or software. MEP Centers can assist you in developing a plan unique to your needs.

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Top Three Business Continuity Factors for Data Centers

Individuals and organizations alike rely on data centers to be up and running 24x7x365. With the emergence of cloud-based technologies, data center infrastructure and uptime has become a prominent factor when it comes to internet-based tools. As a result, business continuity factors for data centers have become increasingly important, and downtime prevention is more critical than ever.

SaaS, web hosting, data backups, redundancy, email, shared apps, and so many other technologies we often take for granted would not exist if not for data center reliability. Whether you are operating your own local data center, you colocate your servers in a managed data center, or your organization helps support multiple customer data centers, there are three key factors that need to be constantly monitored to help maintain the uptime your servers, software, and applications require.

Every data center should have multiple stages of power redundancy, including (but not limited to) uninterruptible power supplies for each rack or cabinet as well as a standby failover generator. The UPS units will help provide momentary power as well as surge protection in the event a backup generator needs to turn on after main power loss.

While many data centers have redundant power, it is critical to monitor and test failover procedures on a regular basis. Power monitoring will let your staff know if there are any issues with main or backup power feeds, or if they have kicked in due to a problem with electricity delivery. Testing failover will let you know that the business continuity plan you have in place for power is working, as most failover events tend to happen during extreme weather such as blizzards or hurricanes that can make reaching the data center nearly impossible.

It’s also important to monitor and check the fuel levels of any backup generators that are installed at your facility. Having a nearly empty tank when faced with the prospect of a multiple-day weather event like a hurricane is a problem. Make sure you can easily see the fuel tank level, or receive automatic notifications in the event your fuel tank level drops below certain points.

Reliable and consistent internet access is another key component to data center uptime. Your business continuity plan should include both redundant internet feeds, as well as the ability to monitor status of usage and uptime on all circuits into your data center.

There are many ways to provide redundant internet access to your data center, including using different carriers who deliver bandwidth over different physical circuits, as well as bringing in bandwidth through different technologies. Thankfully advances in bandwidth delivery as well as the lowering costs of services like fiber and Metro Ethernet have made it much easier for data centers to have reliable, cost-effective connections.

As noted earlier, monitoring the uptime status of the internet connections into your data center (or the delivery of bandwidth to your cabinets if you are colocating with a third-party data center) will help improve your uptime and also help you maintain consistent connectivity. You should be monitoring the bandwidth usage on each circuit, as bottlenecking in the event of a high-usage user (or the unfortunate event of an external DDoS attack) can also cause potential problems or downtime for your data center and your users.

Your business continuity plan should address both capacity as well as reliability of your internet connections, in addition to also providing ways to monitor your bandwidth to help alleviate any problems with the circuits, carriers, or usage before they become service affecting.

Environment

Monitoring the temperature and humidity in a few locations of a data center is not enough. Specific areas such as the top rear of cabinets as well as near HVAC vents should have dedicated monitoring available to immediately alert support staff of temperatures that are exceeding the normal range of operations.

Flood monitoring is also an important factor when it comes to keeping an eye on the environment in your data center to help maintain uptime. The introduction of water due to inclement weather, burst pipes, construction accidents, or any other unforeseen issue can lead to almost immediate server and infrastructure damage. It goes without saying that every data center will have fire and smoke monitoring per local building codes, however it’s been proven that flood damage is 10x more likely to occur than fire damage. Installing flood monitoring is critical to helping prevent water-related damages within your data center.

Organizations who colocate their servers in an outside data center should invest in their own environment monitoring, which can be located within their own assigned space. Many data centers monitor their own facilities, however many do so for their own notification purposes and may not share environment data with their users. In a larger data center with sparse monitoring, their alerts may not be sent until far too late, and your own equipment may be at risk if they are not monitoring close to your racks or cabinets. Protect your own investment by including environment monitoring in your cabinets so you can rest assured that your servers are operating in idea conditions, since you cannot control the environment in a third-party data center.

Business continuity planning for maximum data center uptime

Whether you are operating your own data center or colocating in an external facility, it’s important that you have a business continuity plan to maintain maximum uptime. There are certainly other factors beyond what we’ve mentioned above, such as physical security and documented standard operating procedures for staff, however by including power, bandwidth, and environment monitoring in your business continuity plan you’ll be covering the vast majority of downtime and outages causes to data centers.

Don’t wait until an outage costs your organization hard-earned revenue or customers. By creating your data center business continuity plan right from the start, and including monitoring of primary outage factors, you’ll be helping to guarantee uptime and service availability within your data center.

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Planning Ahead: Data Centers and Ensuring Business Continuity

  • January 18, 2023

business continuity planning for data centers and systems

Companies have invested a lot of resources in the theme of digital transformation for several reasons: to become faster, explore new ways of doing business and to access their customers, automate processes, and others. On the other hand, this also increases dependence on IT systems.

The 2020 pandemic has shown us that we increasingly need to be prepared for the unexpected. The best way to face the unexpected is to think and plan ahead. Therefore, in IT environments, technology and data centers need to work on concepts of increased availability, resilience, and disaster recovery in their design phase so that business continuity is not affected when the unexpected knocks on our door.

Recently, standards, certifications, companies, solutions and professionals dedicated to developing the theme of increasing availability in IT systems and data centers have emerged. As an example, I can cite the Uptime certification for mission-critical environments that classifies projects and operations at levels of redundancy and availability.

Manufacturers like Furukawa have developed solutions and programs for their customers that address the theme of high availability from project design through to operation. Obviously, the market has chosen to adopt solutions that are adherent to this theme and that are resilient when unexpected problems occur.

I often say it’s very difficult to have fail-safe systems. Therefore, it is important to be prepared for as many problems as possible and still be able to cope with failures quickly and with ease. Nowadays even systems that are part of physical segments and network infrastructure have provided tools and solutions that contribute to the rapid recognition of failures and unexpected operations. Ordinary actions, such as a simple maneuver of an optical cable can be monitored and a very large problem can be avoided with the use of these devices.

The issue of cybersecurity and hackers has also become a point of attention. The problem has plagued IT system managers and when these problems happen, they are directly linked to large financial losses and to the image of companies.

Because most services are in the cloud or depend on it for their operation, it is important that we keep it connected from an infrastructure perspective. Based on this view, we can say that the cloud is a set of points connected globally by a network of optical cables, satellites and others. These points scattered around the planet are the data centers and in this intricate network is where the cloud, the data transport and the services work.

It is important for all these points to be connected with homogeneous performance, so that problems arising from performance mismatch and increased delays and failures are minimized. Three factors are important for maintaining network performance: increasing speed and availability and reducing latency.

As already mentioned, prior assessment of the design and topology helps to increase availability of the system, foreseeing alternative routes, applications and types of transmission. Choosing the right fibers and cables as well as the quantity directly impacts speed and latency, because optical interface options that can be directly connected reduce the possibility of delays due to electronics and processing. Flexibly designed systems give the operator a variety of options to respond quickly to changes without harming services.

When seeking to homogenize cloud performance, it means that these variables should be matched as much as possible both within the data center (intra-datacenter) and on the connections between them (inter-datacenter). Transport networks and DCI (datacenter interconnect) and internal networks with very different performances harm the cloud as a whole, as everything is interconnected.

The corporate world is increasingly challenged to evolve with speed and agility to adapt to business needs and meet growing consumer demand. Along this path, good data management will be essential, as it will allow anticipating trends and detecting business opportunities.

“In recent years there has been an unprecedented increase in information traffic that has been demanding, not only reliable connectivity networks, but also greater storage, response, and management capacity in data centers. This new reality requires investments in infrastructure prepared for data transmission, protection, and maintenance, with high availability as close as possible to 100 percent,” explains a      Furukawa specialist.

The data center plays a vital role in responding to the demand for high-value-added services, availability, processing, and storage of large-scale digital data required by hyperconnectivity, especially since the pandemic. That is why scaling IT infrastructure is a great opportunity to reduce operating expenses, streamline processes and become more efficient and reliable every day even though it’s a challenge for organizations, but one that definitely pays off when overcome.

In conclusion, the issue of increased availability should be addressed right away in the design phase. Dealing with this issue in a system that´s already in operation will certainly cost more and require many more resources.

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Book description

Praise for Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems: A Strategic Implementation Guide

"Continuity is a primary business driver. This timely book offers a refreshingly honest road map to informed decision making by one of the mission critical industry's foremost real estate experts. It is a must-read for anyone thinking about 7x24."

--Gerald Gehm, AIA, LEED AP, Principal, Gensler

"Ron is a knowledgeable player in the data center community with a great breadth of experience. He has assembled a terrific guide here that will be a valuable reference for anyone planning a major data center project."

--Joshua Rabina, cofounder and co-President, Sentinel Data Centers

"Ron Bowman's experience in data centers is unique among real estate development professionals. He offers a macro perspective on a holistic set of data center issues, from site selection to design to today's new energy challenges."

--Bob Morris, Principal, Corgan Associates

"I met Ron almost twenty years ago in a riser closet of a building that turned out to be one of the first intelligent or smart buildings in the NYC area. He is a strategic leader in business continuity planning and has been an invaluable resource for site planning and network implementation. This book is a must-read for anyone in the business continuity arena."

--Anthony J. Ontiveros, Vice President/GM, RCN Telecom Services

"An admirable and audacious effort to tackle a difficult and complex subject and make it enjoyable to read. A must for all professionals in the data center industry."

--Peter Gross, Chief Executive Officer, EYP Mission Critical Facilities, Inc.

How well is your business prepared to survive an interruption?

A must-read for everyone who wants to ensure the protection and continuity of their business, Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems is an invaluable "toolkit" for CEOs and managers who find themselves in the role of internal consultant on corporate business continuity planning.

Practical and much needed, this book removes the guesswork and frustration from the business continuity implementation project and provides essential guidance on how to develop, test, and maintain plans to handle emergencies, protect people, and ensure that business continues--come what may.

Table of contents

  • 1. How We Got Here: History of Data Centers and Current Choices
  • 2. Acts of God: Mission-Critical Interruptions and Man-Made Challenges
  • 3. Origins of the Business Impact Analysis
  • 4. Flooding: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid!
  • 5. Data Centers Growth Velocity
  • 6. Energy Use in Data Centers Globally Through 2012
  • 7. Primary and Secondary Data Center Selection: Recent History
  • 8. Public Sector Laws: Guidance and Consequences
  • 9. Government's Role: Summary of National Infrastructure Protection Plan of 2006
  • 10. Tier 4: Basis of Design
  • 11. Unique Challenges of Cooling
  • 12. Unique Challenges of Power
  • 13. Going Green
  • 14. New Methods of Effective Site Selection: Negotiation and Execution
  • 15. Cyberterrorism
  • 16. Need for Speed
  • 17. Future of Data Center Efficiencies—Think Outside the Grid
  • A. Glossary

Product information

  • Title: Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems: A Strategic Implementation Guide
  • Author(s): Ronald H. Bowman
  • Release date: June 2008
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9780470258613

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How to ensure business continuity in the face of internet disruptions.

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Ryan is the President and Chief Operations Officer of GeoLinks , a leading Internet and Digital Voice Provider.

Businesses that want to remain competitive need to proactively plan for unforeseen circumstances that could potentially hinder business continuity, such as internet disruptions. When your internet connection goes down, it not only disrupts your communication channels internally but also cuts you off from vital external stakeholders such as suppliers, customers, distributors and sales partners. Additionally, the reliance on cloud applications and the potential loss of revenue further highlights the urgency for businesses to prioritize measures that ensure uninterrupted operations in the face of internet disruptions.

Throughout my career in telecommunications, I've observed that strategic technology investments are vital to guarantee seamless business operations. Rather than adopting a passive stance, business leaders should actively seek out and invest in innovative strategies and solutions that safeguard business continuity.

Below are three key things businesses should consider to ensure business continuity in 2024.

1. Network Redundancy

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the necessity for flexible working options and forced many businesses to transition into remote models. Even after the pandemic, a significant percentage of companies retain a remote work option. According to Buffer, 64% of companies were fully remote in 2023 and this trend will likely continue, with a prediction that 32.6 million Americans will work remotely by 2025. Network redundancy, the process of data flowing seamlessly when a primary network component or link fails, becomes critical as businesses rely heavily on consistent and stable internet connectivity for both in-office and remote work setups, making it important to maintain business continuity.

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Having internet failover—a backup internet connection that creates redundancy—in place helps safeguard your business from the vulnerabilities of single-connection failure. Technologies like software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN) can easily establish and manage internet failover protection for a single-branch or multi-branch operation. At GeoLinks, for example, we maintain multiple internet paths and diverse connectivity options to guarantee 100% uptime for our business clients and team.

Business leaders should diversify technological investments, including a dedicated fixed wireless circuit, a fiber connection, a 5G hotspot, or other alternatives to mitigate risks and avoid dependency on a single solution.

2. Disaster Recovery Plan

In light of the recent outage that left businesses in south Dallas without internet, the importance of having a disaster recovery plan for internet disruptions becomes even more evident. According to a LogicMonitor study, 96% of organizations experience an outage in a 3-year period, while 95% experienced at least one brownout, defined as "an occasion when less electric power than usual is supplied to an area."

Given that internet connectivity is critical for modern businesses, a well-structured disaster recovery plan is crucial for minimizing the impact on business continuity during unforeseen events, such as bad weather, a cyberattack or system failures. This plan should outline how to quickly restore internet connectivity and minimize the impact of internet disruptions.

To develop an effective plan, businesses should start by conducting a thorough assessment of their current network infrastructure. Identifying potential vulnerabilities and single points of failure is key to shoring up defenses against unexpected outages. Gathering feedback from managers and employees is equally important, as their insights can reveal overlooked aspects and areas that may not have been fully addressed in the initial planning stages.

Integrating diverse technologies, like long-term evolution (LTE), can help improve a disaster recovery plan. LTE is a high-speed wireless communication standard that quickly fills the gap when the primary connection is disrupted. Well-designed networks utilize diverse technologies. Leveraging these technological resources helps to maintain productivity, guarantee smooth communication with stakeholders and safeguard revenue streams.

3. Unified Communications

As technology continues to evolve, the importance of adapting and incorporating these advancements for business continuity increases. Unified communications (UC), which integrates different communication tools into a single system, helps with the modern demand for on-the-go business connectivity.

One key element of unified communications is the incorporation of digital voice technologies. Such technologies allow businesses to make and receive calls via high-speed broadband internet connections, replacing the need for traditional phone lines. Consequently, businesses can maintain seamless communication regardless of location.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be further leveraged for business continuity, with a 2022 Deloitte survey revealing that 76% of respondents plan to increase investments in AI to gain more operational benefits. In terms of business continuity, AI enables automated customer service outside regular business hours. Incorporating tools like digital voice and AI ensures businesses can operate more smoothly and maintain continuity.

Maintaining business continuity requires planning and investment.

As business leaders, it’s important to recognize that no company is exempt from unexpected disruptions. By investing in network redundancy, establishing disaster recovery plans and embracing technology advancements like UC and AI, businesses can optimize operational efficiency, revenue and long-term success.

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Aligning Power Backup Solutions to Safeguard Data Centers

Building resilient data centers: key considerations for electrical system redundancy, exploring redundancy strategies to ensure uninterrupted operations in data centers, mitigating downtime risks: the importance of dual power sources for data centers, securing business continuity best practices in electrical redundancy planning for data centers.

Ensuring Electrical System Redundancy for Business Continuity in Data Centers

Why are Power Backup Solutions Crucial for Data Centers?

The role of ups in power backup solutions, the role of generators in power backup solutions, why is electrical system redundancy important, key considerations for electrical system redundancy, 1. n+1 or 2n redundancy:, 2. capacity planning:, 3. maintenance and testing:, 4. fault tolerance:, 5. monitoring and remote management:, key takeaways, 1. redundant power supply, 2. redundant network connectivity, 3. redundant hardware components, 4. redundant data storage, advantages of dual power sources in data centers, enhanced reliability, improved load balancing, faster disaster recovery, cost-effective scalability, why is electrical redundancy important, best practices for electrical redundancy planning, 1. conduct a thorough risk assessment:, 2. implement redundant backup power sources:, 3. ensure redundancy at multiple levels:, 4. regularly test and maintain backup systems:, 5. deploy automatic transfer switches (ats):, 6. monitor power usage:, 7. implement surge protection mechanisms:, the bottom line.

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  1. Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems: A ...

    Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems: A Strategic Implementation Guide | Wiley Home Business & Management Management Strategic Management Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems: A Strategic Implementation Guide Download Product Flyer Description About the Author Permissions Table of contents

  2. Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems: A Strategic

    Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems: A Strategic Implementation Guide 1st Edition by Ronald H. Bowman (Author) 4.0 8 ratings See all formats and editions

  3. PDF Enhancing Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery with Cloud Data Centers

    Disaster recovery and business continuity have risen as critical strate-gies, explored in this whitepaper's focus on cloud data centers. These centers are vital to fortifying resilience through agility, scalability, and global reach. Disasters, whether natural or human-made, are risks to organizations.

  4. Is Your Data Center Ready for Business Continuity Planning?

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  6. What is business continuity disaster recovery?

    How does BCDR work? Most organizations divide BCDR planning into two separate processes: business continuity and disaster recovery. This is an effective approach because while the two processes share many steps, there are also key differences in how the plans are built, implemented and tested.

  7. Data Center Business Continuity

    A data center's business continuity plan will function as a roadmap. If a disaster strikes, you will hopefully be able to find the type of disaster in your business continuity plan and then begin following the "map" to get to the solution and restore your data center to business as usual.

  8. Preface

    Get Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems: A Strategic Implementation Guide now with the O'Reilly learning platform. O'Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O'Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

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  12. Planning Ahead: Data Centers and Ensuring Business Continuity

    Planning Ahead: Data Centers and Ensuring Business Continuity. Companies have invested a lot of resources in the theme of digital transformation for several reasons: to become faster, explore new ways of doing business and to access their customers, automate processes, and others. On the other hand, this also increases dependence on IT systems.

  13. Business Continuity Planning for Data Centers and Systems: A Strategic

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  14. Business Continuity Planning For Data Centers And Systems A Strategic

    Business Continuity Planning For Data Centers And Systems A Strategic Implementation Guide Business Resumption Planning 1997-12-24 Edward S. Devlin Without a disaster recovery plan, there's no second chance. This is a low-cost, turnkey tool to prepare your company for emergencies. Easy-to-follow and concise,

  15. Business continuity planning for data centers and systems : a strategic

    1. How We Got Here: History of Data Centers and Current Choices -- 2. Acts of God: Mission-Critical Interruptions and Man-Made Challenges -- 3. Origins of the Business Impact Analysis -- 4. Flooding: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! -- 5. Data Centers Growth Velocity -- 6. Energy Use in Data Centers Globally Through 2012 -- 7.

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