Disaster Protection and Recovery

By: Michael Morrell Ross Ashenfelter

Teresa Furnish Karla Maddox

Disaster Prevention and Recovery • Effective Backup Procedures

• Natural Disaster

• Theft

• Hard Drive Recovery

What to Backup• Partial Backup

Only includes data and selected applications

• Full BackupIncludes everything on your system.

Partial vs. Full BackupPartial

BackupFull

Backup

Backup Time

Shorter Longer

Cost of Media

Lower Higher

Restore Times

Longer Shorter

Which to Choose?• Depends on the business

– Off the shelf software?Partial back-up

– Highly customized software?Full back-up

When to Backup• Continuous Data Protection –

incremental backups every few minutes.

• Daily – incremental nightly backups of only the information that has changed since the last full backup.

• Weekly – complete backup (full or partial)

• Monthly – not a very good idea.

Factors to Consider• Number of transactions in a

given period of time.• Budget constraints.• Common practice is weekly

backups with nightly incremental backups.

Storage MediaTape+ Portable

- Expensive to set up

- Storage requirementsContract with off-site company

Send home with employees!?!

- High failure rate

Storage MediaExternal Hard Drive+ Easy to use

- More expensive to set up

- Hard drives are fragile

On-line Backup+ Restore from any location

+ Easy to set-up

- Can be expensive

- Requires high

speed access

Off Site Backup• Hot Sites – a space with computers,

phone lines and other equipment available already configured to the company’s system.

• Warm Sites – a space available with computers and phone lines.

• Cold Site – a space available to bring equipment.

• Quick Ship – agreements with vendors to fast track shipments.

• Mobile Sites – a hot site on wheels!

Perfect world

• Continuous Data Protection over a dedicated broadband line to a Hot Site located within a reasonable traveling distance.

The Bottom Line• Use any method!• Determine how often and how much of

your company’s data needs to be backed up.

• BACK IT UP!• Test your backups• Store them off-site.

IT Disasters and Prevention• Disaster Scenarios• Disaster Prevention• Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)• Test the Backup• Questions to ask yourself - Are

you prepared?

Disaster Scenarios• Programming bug corrupts the data• Chemical spill prevents access to the

office• Fire/Flood destroys on site data• Destruction of data by disgruntled

employees• Hard disk failure• Defective backup media

Disaster Prevention

• Business continuity

• Business impact analysis

• Risk analysis

• Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

• Take copy home• Establish off-site courier pick-up• Every six months, retain the most

recent backup for permanent off-site storage

• Periodically test backups and the DRP

Test the Backup• Regardless of the method or

media the company chooses, the backup must be tested on a regular schedule.

• Restore the backup completely to insure that all data is retrievable and usable.

Questions to ask yourself Are you prepared?

• Do we back up data on a regular basis?

• Do we keep a copy off-site?• Would we have access to the data if we

couldn’t get to the office?• Is our software included in our

company’s business continuity plan?

Theft • Scott Levine - Snipermail

– 8 yrs in prison for theft of up to a billion data files.

• Lexar (USB & memory cards)– Awarded $465mil from Toshiba

• Providence– Theft of patient files

How do we prevent these types of thefts from happening in our business?

Answer

• Identify most valuable information

• Policies

• Procedures

Providence Health

• “We are doing a review of all of our procedures,” spokesman Gary Walker said Friday. “Why did we have records that long? And did we need to have them that long? Those are good questions. We’re looking for the answers.”– Oregonian Feb. 25, 2006

Information Recovery

• Expensive –– $250 Evaluation– $3,000-9,000 for a single 10Gb HD

• Loss of Time– 1 week minimum

Source: ADR Data Recovery

It is possible!

http://www.drivesavers.com/museum/index.html

Conclusion

• Back up often!!!!

• Test the backup

• Make those backups off-site