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Protect Against IT Apocalypse! Network Newbie III - Backup & Disaster Recovery @supertsaiPeter Tsai, Spiceworks IT Content Guy

1Presented by Spiceworkshttp://spiceworks.com/webinars

Quorum provides instant recovery of data, applications, and servers from any type of disaster, helping businesses safeguard their revenue, customers and reputation. The award-winning Quorum appliance and hybrid cloud solutions (disaster recovery as a service, or DRaaS) allow mid-market companies to recover within minutes. As operations continue in recovery mode, Quorum is unique in ensuring your business remains compliant to standards like PCI, HIPAA, SOX, and others. Most importantly, Quorum is simple and cost-effective. If your company avoids just 30 minutes of downtime, the Quorum solution pays for itself. Visit www.quorum.net for more information.2Protect Against IT Apocalypse!What is Disaster Recovery?Whats in a DR Plan?BackupsSomething Broke Fix it!Business Continuity

3With Special Guest:Nigel Hickey (AKA DJ Whiplash)System Administrator - Houston, Texas17+ years in ITVCP5-DCV, VCA [DCV|WM|Cloud]

Disaster Recovery Projects in Spiceworks

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When Natural Disasters Strike!

TornadosFloodsElectrical stormsFiresEarthquakesTsunamisBlizzardsA tree falling through the roofSolar flaresSpace rocks hitting a communications satellite..

Squirrels Attack!!! chewing through the lines

1994 - A squirrel chewed through an electric companys power line, leading to a 34-minute interruption when the exchanges own backup power system in Trumbull failed to kick in. No one is yet ready to describe the recent problems as anything more than a run of bad luck, The New York Times wrote at the time.

1987 - a stray squirrel touched off a power failure in Trumbull, Conn., that shut down the Nasdaq for 82 minutes, preventing an estimated 20 million shares from being traded.

5When Man Made Disasters Strike!

FiresHackers sabotaging RansomwareHuman accidentsIntern deleting data - clickphysical accidenta ship dragging an anchor through a cableSomeone clicking on a malicious link Car driving through a telephone pole

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Disaster recovery- preparing to keep an organizations IT infrastructure running after anaturalorman-madedisaster.

Data Network VoiceServersPower EtcDisasters its not a matter of IF.

Its WHEN!DR = processes & procedures to keep IT systems runningon after an incident:

Data integrity and availabilityNetwork Connectivity (LAN, WAN) - remote connectivityVoice / video communicationsApplication and server uptimeBackup Power supplies & generators

Its often said that disaster recovery is not planning for IF a disaster will occur, its planning for when it will occur

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What disaster means How to circumvent disasterHow to fix things after a disaster

List of potential disasters in order of risk, impact, probability, cost Whats in a Disaster Recovery Plan?

All sorts of templates available in the Spiceworks communityhttp://community.spiceworks.com/storage/disaster-recovery-planning

Data Network VoiceServersPower Phone treeEvent triggers and responsesEmergency response teamEmployee contact / Family ContactMedia contactLegal actionsInsuranceWebsite Call centerInsurances8Whats in a Disaster Recovery Plan? Preventive measures

Detective measures

Corrective measures

LAN, WAN, power, voice, remote connectivity, redundant servers

backups, security audits, regular antivirus updates, surge protectors / power backups, redundant serversto fail over to, regularly testing backup systems, accounting for standard failure rates, having a plan B and C

Network & systems management monitoring tools, event logging & reporting, trigger based alerts, storage monitoring, database monitoring, smoke alarms, etc

Implementing plan B - restoring backups, actually failing over to redundant systems, firing up power generators, connecting backup communications systems, contacting fire departments, vendors for support

9Disaster Recovery - Backup StrategyTape, SAN, NAS, removable diskOn-site, off-site, cloud, hybridFailover (High Availability)Time to RecoveryCost

Back up with recovery in mind

Backup is useless without the ability to recover test your backups. Practice restoring backups

Shorter your time to recovery more expensiveFull backup or incrementalBackup Automation

Restoring from tape slowest down for daysRemovable disks are fasterNetwork attached disks even fasterFailover should be near instant

10The Moment of Truth Fixing Disaster

Photo lab with 10 retail stores and the main print lab

we learned its important to have a backup generator. We were prepared this week. We have a primary and secondary battery backups in place (APC Smart-UPS 3000 RM XL) that will sustain power to our 20 servers for almost 9 hours. This gives us enough time to safely shutdown anything non-essential and re-direct power to a generator. We havent needed it yet, but redundancy is always important. It may be an additional price to pay, but when it saves you in the time of need, it was well worth the investment.

Our SAN is replicated to another storage device in the event that it fails. We dont virtualize anything yet, and the current setup is failing in more ways than one. We are currently planning on implementing a virtualized solution that would ultimately make disaster preparedness much easier and almost 100% automated.

Actions are already underway to ensure there is an off-site location to collect our FTP orders. The network was set up long ago by my predecessor and its not up to par with today's standards. My goal is to have our domain network attached to an actual domain. This will allow us to change the FTP IP address to the domain name. This means that we can setup our DNS records to point to our physical location during normal operations, and will redirect to our "hosted" solution in the event of outages. That way it will appear to our customers we are still online.

This process is called Mitigation. We look at what can go wrong, and minimize the effects. Backups are part of this process, and we need to take a good look there and determine just what information we really need to keep. The old advice was back everything up. Now VM backups make this really easy to do, but since not all software is created equally, we need to make sure that first we know what were backing up, and most importantly, can we actually do a restore if we need to. This process usually involves close monitoring of your backups, and then doing occasional practice restores.

The Planning side of the house is actually writing it all down. I like step-by-step instructions, usually with lots of pictures. When you write it down, do so in 4th grade English. These things always seem to happen at 3 AM when your brain is tired, youre under the gun, and the last thing you need to do is try to figure out what you meant eight months before. Best advice here, practice your plan. The wrong time to find out if its going to work for you is when you need it.

11Business ContinuityPlanning for keeping all aspects of a business functioning in the midst of disruptive events. DRBusiness Continuity

Business Continueity Includes Disaster Recovery and more considerations.

Staff illnessDeparture of key staffersSupply chain problems (what if you run a factory)Water, natural gasNon IT related Machinery / equipment (trucks, factory machines)Etc

Governments have business continuity plans President, VP, Speaker of the House, President pro temp of the senate, secretary of state, secretary of tresasury, secretary of defense, attorney general, etc

12Continue the discussion:

http://community.spiceworks.com/storage/disaster-recovery-planning

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