by Scott Havenor & Bruce Blume

During a series of Gartner, Inc. conference calls held in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, analysts and data recovery specialists reported the following:

Many Gartner clients were also reporting that they had experienced serious network issues after the attacks and that they had underestimated how long it would take to recover. Also, they had not updated capacity requirements as environments grew, and few had workstation recovery plans for end users. Some companies even lost vital records because backup and off-site storage programs were flawed.

Hopefully, your company will never be directly affected by a disaster of the magnitude seen in New York City last September. But disasters come in all shapes and sizes—extreme weather, prolonged power or communication failures, criminal activity, civil unrest, acts of terrorism, security breaches, lack of capacity, application failure, loss of a critical supplier, loss of facilities, loss of key employees, employee malice, etc. Some are preceded by warnings like weather reports of a hurricane bearing down on the coast. Others come unexpectedly. But all have two things in common: the interruption of the flow of your business and the potential to ruin your company. In fact, two out of every five businesses that experience a disaster go out of business.
So what will it be? Take a chance that you will never experience a disaster? Or invest in an up-to-date recovery plan to help guide the business following a disaster?

The time to plan is not during a crisis. Developing and maintaining a disaster recovery (DR) plan before a crisis occurs is not only smart, but it’s also cost effective and time well spent. In other words, smart businesses plan to survive, not survive to plan.

Teradata’s Business Continuity Solutions (BCS) can help guide your business through the process of creating a recovery plan that is appropriate for the critical data and business functions that keep the company operating on a day-to-day basis.

BCS consultants suggest starting with a business impact analysis (BIA). This is an inexpensive way to determine the size and scope of the DR plan. A Teradata BIA will identify potential risks, pinpoint business-critical applications and data, quantify the potential impact of disaster on business and computer operations, and list alternative recovery strategies with estimated costs.

But, as many unfortunate businesses have discovered, total recovery is impossible unless the current data is properly backed up, archived off-site and ready to restore. One customer found during testing that a critical file was missing. It had never been backed up in the three years it existed because of a procedural oversight. This same customer also discovered during another test that backup tapes were completely blank.

The best way to back up a Teradata database is with the Backup Archive Restore (BAR) solution. The BAR solution combines market-leading hardware and software with the expertise available from Teradata Customer Services. Consultants can analyze your business and Teradata system, determine your BAR requirements, plan and design a custom BAR system to meet your requirements, implement and test the planned system and provide operational training.

Armed with a BAR strategy and the understanding of the size and scope of recovery from the BIA, you can develop an effective DR plan. A Teradata DR plan develops and documents details that are unique to your business needs and recovery strategy. It also documents best practices and processes to follow during a recovery, and it provides for an annual review and test of the recovery plan.

Part of the planning process is creating a computer recovery strategy. Through the process you might determine that your vendors can’t supply replacement equipment as quickly as you need it to maintain business continuity. So even if you have backup office space (a cold site), you wouldn’t be able to reload the data without the servers, computers, etc. necessary to run the system. You either need to build and maintain a separate, redundant computer system (a hot site), or you need to contract for a shared hot site like Teradata’s Recovery Centers.

For a fraction of the cost of a redundant system, Teradata’s Recovery Center Agreement provides subscribers 24/7 access to a dedicated recovery center containing Teradata Warehouse systems and communication equipment. Teradata recovery specialists are also available to provide assistance should you need it during the recovery process. You can even maintain a copy of your business’s Teradata software at the center.

The agreement includes an annual test so you can rehearse and revise your recovery plans. Analysts and consultants recommend regular testing to confirm that everything is ready should a disaster occur. One BCS customer discovered an hour into its full-recovery test that it needed more capacity than what was contracted for. Seems they had experienced significant growth, but
no one had time to update the recovery plan. Remember, it takes continued commitment to ensure that the initial DR investment is not lost due to outdated data or inadequate resources.

For additional information on Teradata’s Backup Archive Restore (BAR), Business Continuity Solutions (BCS), business impact analysis (BIA), disaster recovery (DR) planning and the Recovery Center offers, contact your Teradata sales representative or visit www.teradata.com. T

Scott Havenor is Teradata’s BAR offer manager. Scott can be reached at scott.havenor@sandiegoca.ncr.com. Bruce Blume is Teradata’s BCS offer manager. You can e-mail Bruce at bruce.blume@daytonoh.ncr.com.

 

ILLUSTRATION BY BENJAMIN SHEARN/FPG INTERNATIONAL