Disaster Recovery Planning

What is a Backup Copy?

If this hardware dies, are there still two copies of my data somewhere else…?

When it comes to three copies of the data, each copy needs to be on a different storage system. If you have two copies of the data on the same storage device and the hardware fails, then neither backup is going to work. Being mindful that the storage the backups are sent to are not on single points of failure is a key factor in the 3 of the 3-2-1 rule. Another way to look at it is: “If this hardware dies, are there still two copies of my data somewhere else?”

Backup copy allows you to create several instances of the same backup data in different locations. This is the mechanism to help you follow the the 3-2-1 rule.

What is the best practice 3-2-1 rule?…

3: You must have at least three copies of your data: the original production data and two backups.

2: You must use at least two different types of media to store copies of your data, for example, local disk and cloud.

1: You must keep at least one backup offsite (for example, in the cloud or in a remote site).

Our ARCVault service in partnership with Veeam provides you with this mechanism.

What is a Business Continuity Plan?

A Business Continuity Plan details how a business will continue to operate and serve its customers, even in the face of a dramatic event like a natural disaster, major IT failure, cyberattack or as recently suffered a global pandemic. The end goal is to preserve the business viability, market position, reputation, and customers, even in the face of a crisis.

A business continuity plan must consider important questions such as: –

• What single points of failure exist in the business?
• What are the critical dependencies on equipment, in-house staff, suppliers or other third parties?
• What workarounds exist for disruption to any of these?

These questions only scratch the surface when preparing a Business Continuity Plan, but hopefully provide a starting point. For further information on how Arc Systems can assist in preparing your IT Business Continuity Plan please make contact.

What is a Veeam Cloud Connect Gateway?

Veeam Cloud Connect provides a secure multi-tenant hosting environment accessible through a remote gateway. It works by provisioning or segmenting your own dedicated compute resource and storage mapped to tenants or customers. The Cloud Gateway is used for our BUaaS and DRaaS services to offer storage cloud repositories for offsite backups to fully provisioned computer resource for full site failover into our infrastructure.

Key features: –

• Cloud Connect seamlessly integrates your own cloud repository directly into your existing Veeam backup infrastructure. There is no separate console, and cloud repositories work like other backup repositories – except they are in the cloud.
• Manage your storage with self-provisioning features.
• No VPN required – Data is encrypted and sent through an SSL connection, so you will not need to worry about a VPN.
• Fast and secure backup and replication to the cloud – Get physical and virtual backups off site and replicate VM’s without the cost and complexity of building and maintaining an off-site infrastructure.

Air-gapped backups offer a truly protected method against threats. As backups are “off-line” they cannot be manipulated or deleted remotely this ensures data is completely void of threat.