Disaster Recovery

What is Disaster recovery?

"Fail to plan – plan to fail" is a phrase that really applies to Disaster recovery. For many businesses, managing the increasing amount of data that is being collected, processed, transferred and stored both internally and at external data centres represents a major challenge. However, having large and critical amounts of stored data also increases the risk of data failures.

Disaster recovery (DR) means having guidelines, procedures and tools in place which enable businesses to regain the use of critical systems and IT infrastructure as soon as possible following a natural or manmade disaster.

Disaster recovery revolves around incidents which are so serious and so significant that they affect or stop critical business operations for a period of time. Examples of types of disasters are:

Cyber attacks such as malware, DDoS and ransomware attacks
Sabotage
Power failures
Equipment failure
Epidemics or pandemics, such as COVID-19
Terrorist attacks or threats
Occupational accidents
Hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.
Fires

Not having a disaster recovery plan can be catastrophic if an accident does occur. Many companies never recover from a disaster, so every business should have a disaster plan as part of their business strategy.

To prepare for disaster recovery, businesses often carry out a thorough analysis of their systems and draw up a formal document to follow in times of crisis - a disaster recovery plan. Thinking about disasters before they happen and drawing up a plan regarding how to respond can provide many benefits. It raises awareness of potential disruptions and helps a business to prioritise its mission-critical functions.

Before a business can determine its disaster recovery strategies, it must first analyse existing assets and priorities. Two different types of analysis usually play a part in DR decision-making:

Risk analysis or risk assessment is an evaluation of all the potential risks that the business could face, as well as the outcomes. The aim of the assessment is to identify potential hazards, determine who or what these hazards will harm, and use the findings to create procedures that take these risks into account.
Business Impact Analysis (BIA) evaluates the impact of the risk that is identified above for your business operations. A BIA can help to predict and quantify costs, both financial and non-financial. It also investigates the impact of different potential disasters on business security, finance, marketing, reputation, legal compliance, and quality assurance.

The main types of disaster recovery include:

Data centre recovery
Network recovery
Virtualised disaster recovery
Cloud disaster recovery
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

Cegal and Disaster Recovery

Cegal offers database monitoring services for a range of technologies. These include Oracle, MS SQL, MySQL, PostgresSQL, Kafka, Elasticsearch, etc. We deliver both on-prem and via the various cloud providers, such as Oracle, Azure, AWS and Google.

We specialise in hybrid cloud solutions, set-up and operation of business-critical solutions and monitoring of databases. Cegal has extensive experience of high-availability environments, helping both small and large customers to find the right solution at the right price.