In the big picture, keeping your company operating nonstop is more than just planning for disaster recovery—it's about building a resilient enterprise. But it's not as simple as it once seemed. The range of options can be overwhelming, from local backup to replicating data over long distances and establishing a practical methodology that expedites recovery while minimizing data loss.
Introducing Hitachi Replication Manager
Hitachi replication users can now benefit from a uniquely integrated tool that allows them to better control RPO and RTO objectives: Hitachi Replication Manager.
For Hitachi Data Systems customers seeking in-system or distance replication solutions, Hitachi Replication Manager software configures, monitors and manages Hitachi replication products for both open systems and mainframe environments. This software product is part of the Hitachi Storage Command Suite.
The solution builds on existing Hitachi technology by leveraging the powerful replication capabilities of the systems. It decreases management complexity while increasing staff productivity and provides greater control than previously available solutions through a single, consistent user interface.
A Blueprint for Business Resilience and Operational Efficiency
In today's always-on business world, fast and continuous access to applications and data is essential for success. As a result, business continuity has become an integral part of the business and IT lexicon—and an increasingly larger portion of the IT budget.
Understand Your Key Business Challenges and Requirements
Business Challenges
- How do I determine which parts of my business are most at risk?
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Identifying and ranking risks to your business according to potential loss is the first step in designing and implementing and business continuity solution. The list of potential risks can run from data corruption to natural disasters, to application crashes, power outages, failed backups, hardware failures, and, even, the likelihood of an SEC investigation. While you can do this yourself, Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services offers a Risk Analysis Workshop which can help you through a structured process. This service includes:
- Review - and jointly score your organization's continuity environment with a cross-functional scorecard
- Identify - areas for potential improvement and objectively map them to available solutions
- Develop - a logical road map that prioritizes sequential steps for improvement within budgetary constraints
- Present - findings in a top-down fashion with scores, charts, and a high-level project plan
With the results of the Risk Analysis Workshop, you can articulate these potential risks and costs to executives so that everyone understands the trade-offs before problems occur.
- How do I ensure my business continuity infrastructure is resilient?
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The old saying has it: “the proof is in the pudding”. While there is really no culinary dimension to IT-focused business continuity, the proverb exemplifies that unless and until you can prove you can recover your data and applications in a certain amount of time following a variety of events or disruptions…it will be hard to measure success. Testing the recovery plan on a regular basis is absolutely critical.
The starting point is a good understanding of your risks, for example through the Risk Analysis Workshop. And remember that a strong infrastructure can have no weak links: to protect your critical data assets, robust and highly available storage systems are required, combined with software such as Hitachi Data Systems replication or data protection offerings.
- How can I establish and then meet recovery-point and recovery-time objectives?
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The old saying has it: “the proof is in the pudding”. While there is really no culinary dimension to IT-focused business continuity, the proverb exemplifies that unless and until you can prove you can recover your data and applications in a certain amount of time following a variety of events or disruptions…it will be hard to measure success. Testing the recovery plan on a regular basis is absolutely critical.
The starting point is a good understanding of your risks, for example through the Risk Analysis Workshop. And remember that a strong infrastructure can have no weak links: to protect your critical data assets, robust and highly available storage systems are required, combined with software such as Hitachi Data Systems replication or data protection offerings.
- How can I get the most reliable backup and recovery—faster and more cost-effectively?
Backing up used to be easy…and recovery was sometimes tested. The world has changed and the tremendous growth of data now backed up by traditional backup infrastructures is causing havoc. Backup windows are a thing of the past—and recovering data in a timely fashion is ever more critical. On top of it all is the specter of compliance: Can you prove you have a backup? Can you show me you can recover?
In order to help organizations improve on their backup infrastructure, it is key to first understand what the backup activity really is, how many backups complete, how many fail…and how many are false positives. Through the combination of advanced backup reporting software and backup assessment services, Hitachi Data Systems can help determine what the best approach is to maximize return on investment. Hitachi Data Systems also offers unique data protection software: The Hitachi Data Protection Suite.
In addition, with the advent of disk to disk backup, our storage systems are a perfect tool to reduce backup windows, provide nondisruptive backup capabilities, and shorten recovery processes, regardless of your existing backup infrastructure.
- How do I decide how far away my replication site needs to be and how many sites do I need?
There are many variables that go into answering the question of how far away replication sites need to be. Among these are regulatory requirements, the likelihood of major power outages or natural events (earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.), best practices in your industry, insurance premiums, and, not least of all, your budget. There are trade-offs to be made:
Is 300 miles between sites enough distance? Perhaps not, if out-of-region disaster recovery is a requirement. Is being up and running on the same day good enough? What is the trade-off between distance and data currency? Is there a requirement for complete integrity of data? How much data you can afford to lose.
Hitachi Data Systems offers different solutions depending on your requirements:
- Short-distance replication
- Long-distance replication
- Three Data Center solutions
For Hitachi Data Systems, business continuity means partnering with you to understand your key business problems and requirements, and providing robust application-focused storage solutions that enhance operational efficiency and resilience. We can help you determine the right approach. Experts from our Global Solution Services group offer the Risk Analysis Workshop and other Business Continuity Services to help you assess the degree of risk your organization faces and determine logical design options.
- How can I ensure data consistency over replicated sites?
Replicating data over distance is a critical component to ensuring effective and efficient protection of your data assets. While synchronous replication is a great way to guarantee data integrity over metropolitan distances, the challenge becomes all the more daunting over long distances where asynchronous techniques have to be used. How do you ensure that the data is replicated exactly in the same sequence? You really can’t afford to lose anything in flight! To learn more, read our Ensuring Data Integrity with Asynchronous Replication white paper.
Using an asynchronous replication technology that guarantees data integrity by leveraging write order sequencing and/or time stamping is absolutely critical. It’s only a starting point since it is also critical to offer advanced management tools that allow you to maintain point in time copies at distance site for disaster recovery testing for example.
- How can I ensure my information is recoverable and usable following an outage?
Critical application outrages cost organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business opportunity, productivity, and customer satisfaction. It is therefore key to have a strategy in place to “get back on your feet” quickly and efficiently, locally or sometimes at a remote site depending upon the nature of the outage. In order to have recoverable data, it is critical to have identified the data protection characteristics and requirements of your key applications and identified and measured the risks that could affect your business operations. The ultimate goal is to essentially build data protection into the infrastructure by combining various technologies that optimize RPO and RTO.
Hitachi Technologies
Press and Analyst Coverage
“Enterprises that deploy integrated solutions, such as the Hitachi Storage Command Suite, will be better able to maximize efficiencies within their storage infrastructure. Improved storage economics are achieved by enabling storage administrators to manage a greater amount of capacity per person. This, combined with a comprehensive IT risk management and data protection strategy, creates a powerful arsenal that goes beyond simply protecting data.” — Laura DuBois, program director, Storage Software, IDC Read More...
