Why Is Disaster Recovery So Difficult?

In the past 10 years many businesses have switched from tape-based backup systems to diskbased backup. Tape systems tend to be difficult to manage and much slower than disk-based systems not only for creating backup, but for restoring them as well. In addition, the cost of disk-based storage continues to drop every year. It’s now extremely affordable to purchase multi-TB disks, so disk space is much less of an issue than it used to be.

Even businesses that are required to have tape backup for compliancy and archival purposes have moved to hybrid systems because of the time factor involved in recovery. The fastest tape backup cannot compete with the slowest disk-based system for recovery times. When you need rapid disaster recovery, when your RTO is hours, not days, you must have disk-based disaster recovery.

The problem is that disks, while becoming more affordable, have not become any more reliable. Most industry estimates place the average disk lifespan around five years. The truth is that hard disk drives fail. So wise administrators prepare for that eventuality and anticipate how they will recover when that drive failure occurs. When, not if.

Another issue is that even with the increased recovery speeds that disk-based storage offers, restoring a server is still a time-consuming process. Traditionally, when a disk drive fails, IT administrators must repair the server, if possible, re-install the operating system, re-install applications, and then add data file backups, if they are available. This process of rebuilding a server can take days – time your business can ill-afford to lose.

In addition, migrating to a new server is an equally painful process, requiring weeks of planning and days to execute – if all goes well. As a result of these limitations, many SMBs choose to avoid the issue altogether, deciding that a server disaster recovery plan is too painful a process to contemplate. Or they continue with a backup solution that is too complicated or does not meet the needs of a growing business. Day-to-day server problems are ignored or placed on the backburner. This is not a safe and secure way to assure business continuity or data availability.

If disaster recovery is too complicated or painful to contemplate contact The Vault Corporation team, to remove the pain before, not if, a disaster hits…