Central Illinois' IT Experts

What Kind of Disasters Do You Need to Prepare For?

First, you’ll need to outline the disasters that you should be prepared for. As they say, you should always plan for the worst-case scenario, and no event should be kept from consideration.

• User Error: Everyone makes mistakes, and the results vary wildly from minor inconveniences to major problems that affect multiple users. This includes accidental deletions, shadow IT, and other issues that could place your business in a bad spot if unprepared for.
• Key Staff Unavailability: What would happen if someone with important knowledge or permissions were to suddenly be away from the office due to some accident, personal emergency, or other reason? If this access is exclusive, your business could be placed in a precarious situation.
• Equipment Failure: Most modern businesses rely heavily on technology of some sort, and that technology requires an infrastructure. If these were to fail, what would you do? Important processes and procedures could be interrupted.
• Malware: Malware is a constant threat to businesses, and it has evolved over the years to become a force to be reckoned with. Considering how many different ways there are for hackers to initiate threats, you need to be vigilant at all times to avoid it from becoming an issue.
• Natural Disasters: Most businesses fear natural disasters of certain types, and it’s largely due to their geographic location. Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, electrical storms… these are all risks that businesses need to consider when planning out their disaster recovery plan. While not all organizations will be susceptible to the same types of disasters, they all need to have a plan to address the specific situations they might find themselves in.
• The Unexpected: Some scenarios are impossible to imagine, so it’s best to simply prepare for anything.

How to Be Sure You’re Properly Prepared

When it comes to preparing and evaluating your data backup solutions, you should regularly go through the process to make sure that the strategy is sufficient. You need to make a routine out of it so that the plan can be administered in a moment’s notice. Malware, natural disasters, and other threats aren’t going to wait until you’re prepared, so take time to evaluate your processes and ensure your employees are aware of them, too.

This frequent testing should be designed to evaluate the technical aspect of your disaster recovery plan, as well as your team’s ability to carry it out. As you collect data from these tests, you need to update the plan and resolve any issues that become known. There is no room for error in your recovery tests, as the future of your business depends on it.

Tests to Run

Here are some of the types of backup tests that you should administer on a semi-regular basis:

• Walkthrough Test: This is simply a basic review of the plan, reading it over to ensure that everyone involved remains updated to any possible changes that may have been made.
  
  
• Tabletop Test: Similar to a tabletop game, someone from each department comes in and is given a hypothetical disaster scenario. Each team member should explain what they would do in their given scenario. This is useful in revealing possible shortcomings in a business’ existing strategy.
  
  
• Parallel Test: These tests are meant to evaluate how well the restoration process works, using a virtual machine to “restore” your system, which continues to run in your usual infrastructure.
  
  
• Full Interruption Testing: This test is one of the most in-depth, but also the most risk-laden, as it could lead to actual downtime. In fact, some industries have regulations barring this kind of test, so be sure to double-check with your IT resource that this option is available to you.

Disaster recovery is such an important part of business that you can’t take any chances with it. If you want help making sure that your solution will work as intended when you need it to most, reach out to us at 217-475-0226.

They virtualize.

A virtual machine provides the ability to host multiple virtual servers, providing more incentive for a business to go big with their initial IT expenses, because they can get immense value out of them.
Let’s start with some terms that are often associated with virtual machines:

• Virtualization - Virtualization is the process where information that is found on physical hardware (or the physical hardware itself) is transferred into a virtual environment. 
• Hypervisor - The process that takes hardware resources and combines them in a way where they can be delivered into a virtual environment. 
• P2V - Short for “physical-to-virtual”, which is the act of migrating resources from a physical server to a virtual one. 
• Snapshot - An image of the state of a virtual machine at any specific point. In a snapshot you can see all of the data, configurations, and programs that are open at the time, in effect saving all the work that has been done on that system.
• Clone - An exact copy of a virtual machine that can be transferred to another VM. 

Host and Guest

When committing to using virtualized resources, you need to understand that your VM is the guest of a host machine. The host machine is typically a high-powered server that you would have normally used to host your computing resources, while each virtual machine, whether it is a virtualized server or a virtualized desktop (or something else), are guests on the hosted machine. By being able to fit several guest machines on one host machine, you can save a substantial amount of money. 

Uses of Virtual Machines

The virtual machine is often used for non-essential purposes, but it can be rolled out to cover about any computing process a business needs. They are predominantly utilized in resource testing. Some more popular uses include:

• Try out a new operating system (OS) - Running a new OS on a virtual machine can provide technicians and administrators with the perspective needed to determine if the new OS is right for their business.
• Use Desktop as thin client - the virtual desktop turns even a PC with fewer resources into a productivity machine. 
• Testing software - One of the most prevalent uses is to test new software before installing it on a larger computing infrastructure. 
• Consolidation - Virtual machines are being used more than ever. Today, virtual server technology can allow organizations to roll out one server and use it to host several. This presents the opportunity for major cost savings.

By virtualizing some of your computing resources, you can save money and gain flexibility. Learn more about the virtual machine by calling the IT experts at Decatur Computers Inc. today at 217-475-0226.

If you understand the differences between the various types of cloud solutions, you’ll be able to make the best decision regarding the future of your business.

Public Cloud

The public cloud includes any services that use cloud technology and hosting to provide some sort of utility. By definition, this includes solutions like Dropbox, Google Drive, Office 365, and other similar services. The public cloud could also include services like Netflix, as well as any service delivered through shared hosted resources. This could include data, applications, and other services being offered.

One of the biggest features of the public cloud is also its largest drawback. Businesses that leverage the public cloud are trusting the provider to keep the storage infrastructure secure. While this might cut costs and remove responsibility for maintaining the infrastructure, it takes one of the most important choices out of your hands.

Private Cloud

In comparison to the public cloud, a private cloud is one that is hosted on-premise or on an external provider’s hardware resources, often in an off-site location. Therefore, you have full control over it, or at least the control to make changes as needed. If it’s hosted off-site, you have the option to give employees remote access, making it easy for them to go about their day-to-day duties without the need for on-site maintenance and management. With a private cloud hosted off-site, you can implement additional services such as application hosting, data storage, data backup and disaster recovery, and more.

Hybrid Cloud

Some organizations decide that a combination of the two types of cloud solutions is ideal for their particular model. They might find that certain information is acceptable to be hosted in a public environment, whereas other proprietary information is limited to a private infrastructure.

For information on how to implement your very own cloud solution, reach out to us at 217-475-0226.