Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity

Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) solutions could be as simple as backup and restore on a number of virtualized servers in a remote data center to a complex fully duplicated data center with real-time data replication in a remote site providing five 9's availability for mission critical applications.

To develop a hot DR or BC site requires a clear understanding of business SLAs for the enterprise and the requirements for the availability of the mission critical applications. In an ideal world cost would not be a factor. Unfortunately, building a hot DR or BC site is a costly undertaking and a cost benefits analysis is required to provide the best possible solution for the available budget.

Crescent Enterprise Solutions provides comprehensive set of ITIL-based processes and methodologies as well as technology solutions, including our own intellectual property, for delivering an optimized hot DR or BC site. The process includes the following steps:

• Build The Team: Build the team from your key stakeholders including business and IT personnel together with Crescent experts that work with the same methodology, processes, and tools.
• Identify Base Line: Using automated tools, collect asset information from the existing environment (source). This includes all details for hardware, operating systems, and applications. Create a Configuration and Change Management Database (CMDB).
• Design DR: Using business SLAs and data from source (prior step) to identify the target DR or BC hardware and software requirements including server and storage virtualization and applications.
• Financial Analysis: Provide feedback and recommendation on alternatives configurations and costs (i.e. options) associated with the desired business goals.
• Capacity Planning: Adjust the DR plan based on the business feedback from the prior step.
• Dry Run: Develop a repeatable process for building the DR or BC which includes predictable future maintenance costs. Demonstrate results with a dry run approach.
• Full Execution: Build the DR (or BC) based on a proven model.

At Crescent we pride ourselves on the experience and expertise of our consultants. By teaming up with your key stakeholders and building the DR one step at a time, the risks associated with undertaking a critical business initiative such as building a DR are significantly reduced.