Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity

And The Cost of Downtime

Are they the same?Disaster Recovery and Business

Continuity are stemmed from the same general idea: in the event of a disaster,

keep the business running as quickly and as seamlessly as possible.

However, Disaster Recovery is a reactive solution and Business Continuity is a

proactive solution for businesses.

Goal of Disaster RecoveryTo ensure that the data is recovered in the event of a downtime disaster – without the loss of that critical data.

Goal of Business Continuity

To allow businesses to continue running without interruptions or to operate in real-time and pick up a falling component seamlessly so a business experiences no downtime

in the first place.

Combining the two……actually allows a business to go back to

a prior backup made by the Disaster Recovery replication site and recover from that virus or corruption at a time

before the invasion occurred.

Key TermsDisaster Recovery– The ability to handle site failure with

minimal disruption to the business

Continuous Operations (CO)– The ability to perform routine application

and server maintenance and backups with minimal disruption to the supported business function – focused on eliminating downtime associated with planned events

Key TermsContinuous Availability (CA)– The continuous availability of critical business

functions - focused on eliminated planned and unplanned downtime as well as server, site and enterprise protection

High Availability (HA)– The ability to handle application failures with

minimal disruptions to the business - focused on continuous operations and recovery of server failure

Key TermsBusiness Continuity – Focused not only on eliminating the

risks of downtime to your IT assets, it includes the people and process to handle an unplanned event that affects the entire business or a region in which the business operates. It includes IT functions along with pre-arranged processes for alerting employees and customers to a disaster, and the preparation and testing of disaster preparedness plans.

Sources of Unplanned Downtime

Natural Disasters• Wildfires• Floods & Flash Floods• Hurricanes• Tornadoes• Thunderstorms & Lightning • Snow, Ice & Winter Storms• Tsunamis & Other Tidal

Action• Dam Breaks• Volcanoes• Earthquakes

Man-Made Disasters• Home & Building Fires• Tripping Over the Power

Cord• Hazardous Material

Accidents• Spilling Coffee or Water on

Critical Piece of Hardware• Terrorism• Aviation Accidents• Ship/Maritime Accidents• Train/Railroad Accidents• Riots/Civil Unrest• Bridge Collapses• Nuclear/Radiological

Accidents

Downtime & Its CostsUnplanned downtime: Unpredictable events that cause an outage; usually related to power, natural disaster or human error. Unplanned downtime typically represents less than 5 percent of all downtime.

Planned downtime: Planned downtime occurs when you purposely bring systems, databases, applications or networks down for maintenance or backup activities, including daily/weekly saves, batch jobs, database reorganizations, application and system upgrades, system maintenance, performance tuning and other activities.

Assessing the Financial Impact of Downtime

Determining the financial cost of downtime can vary with the severity of the data or application that experienced the downtime, the time of day, the

number of users affected, and more.

Calculating the costs can be difficult and many of the direct and indirect costs are likely not

immediately apparent.

Tangible/Direct Costs• Lost transaction

revenue• Lost wages• Lost inventory• Remedial labor costs• Marketing costs• Bank fees• Legal penalties

Intangible/Indirect Costs• Lost business

opportunities• Loss of employee and/or

employee moral• Decrease in stock value• Loss of customer/partner

goodwill• Brand damage• Driving business to

competitor• Bad publicity/press

Potential Costs

What to Consider

5 Steps to Determine Optimum Availability

• Determine the RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective)

• Determine which applications and data are the most critical and how much downtime would be acceptable for each

• Assess the ability of your staff to conduct emergency-scenario operations

• Determine how you will assure the viability and reliability of the backup data and applications to ensure that the backup version will be up to standards

• Prepare a budget

Summaryof companies experienced one or more periods of downtime in the past 12 months.

of SMBs do not have a DR plan in place.

are in areas where they are prone to natural disasters.

86%

50%

65%These issues can be avoided by having a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plan in place. Take advantage of scalability, reliability, recovery, and peace of mind!

For More InformationContact Us Today

RapidScale, Inc.100 Pacifica Ste 100

Irvine, CA 92611(949) 236-7007

Sales: (866) 371-1355Support: (866) 686-0328

www.rapidscale.net