Latest News from Brace Rennels

Five Common Backup and Recovery Mistakes

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:30:00 EST

Server backup and recovery isn’t rocket surgery, but you would be surprised by the number of IT organizations that can’t get it right. Here are five of the most common mistakes that I have seen. Don’t worry, it’s Back Up” Famous last words! Is it really? Prove it! Just because you have run a backup procedure, throw in a fresh tape into the drive doesn’t necessarily mean that the server(s) are protected. Over confidence or misconceptions about backup are common mistakes. It’s like having a plan without ever testing.

HA: Doing More With Less

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EDT

High availability for full server protection has never been more important. As virtualization and blade technologies continue to rapidly be adopted, IT infrastructures are becoming smaller and more efficient. Doing more with less has been a centralized theme for IT managers this past year but “less” doesn’t mean ignoring backup and recovery strategies. If anything high availability solutions are also being consolidated, easier to deploy and much more cost effective. Most everyone has seen the availability curve describing the cost of a low recovery point (RPO) or time objective (RTO) using some medium like tape can be low cost but not effective to achieve high availability for business critical applications. As the RTO and RPO window shrinks typically the cost increases to achieve rapid five 9 availability. This is no longer the case and if anything the paradigm is shifting and becoming the exact opposite because the cost of downtime or the length of time it takes to recover is more expensive than preventing it.

Meeting the Constant Challenges of Desktop Management

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:30:00 EDT

Desktop management is a constant challenge for most IT or call center managers. A new update, service pack or totally new version of operating system can cause headaches for even the most experienced IT professional. The challenges with provisioning new versions of operating systems for desktops haven’t changed over the years.

Five Tips for Consolidating and Protecting Your Data Center

Thu, 07 May 2009 09:51:00 EDT

There are several challenges when attempting a data center move or even just consolidation. Availability is the number one priority. All the systems during the move need to be available so production operations are not interrupted. Depending on the technology you use some solutions will require more downtime than others. If you are consolidating to a blade or virtual machine infrastructure then you also need to prepare for provisioning new servers rapidly. Here are a few tips to help maximize your data center uptime while facilitating a move, migration and or consolidation.

Backing Up Virtual Machines

Tue, 05 May 2009 07:00:00 EDT

Virtualization technology is continuing to be adopted for consolidating data center infrastructure and providing a more flexible platform for moving, provisioning and backing up workloads. This has put an emphasis on backup and recovery; because a single virtual host can contain several virtual machines and is even more important to not only protect the individual virtual machines but the entire virtual host. Virtualization has the same single point of failure as some cluster technologies and services: shared disk. What happens to your virtual infrastructure if you lose connectivity to your primary storage unit? The entire virtual host becomes unavailable and that can put upwards of 8-10 production workloads at risk, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

What's the Disaster Recovery Plan for our Nations Newspapers?

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:00:00 EDT

With print advertising declining due to the use of the internet as the primary source of information today, what is the disaster recovery plan of our nation’s newspaper industry? More and more newspapers are facing the challenge of declining advertising revenue and are looking for ways to offset these costs.

A Pandemic Exercise - Telecommuting & Will the Infrastructure Support It?

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:00:00 EDT

I attended a pandemic exercise at Northeastern University last year that was really enlightening and timely considering the latest information about the “swine flu”. Although far from a pandemic at this time, the CDC is taking preventative measures by communicating to the general public what they can do to avoid becoming ill. Here are a few tips that can help spread the transmission.

Workload Flexibility: Server and Workstation iSCSI Provisioning

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:18:00 EDT

Workload migrations and portability don’t have to be limited to moving active workloads. Workload flexibility is a key function of workload optimization solutions that allow rapid provisioning of new workloads. iSCSI and workstation consolidation have been the latest trend to provide more flexible management for organizations supporting call centers to quickly deploy new machines.

Move, Flex and Protect Your Workloads

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:00:00 EDT

Server, storage and site migrations have always been the elephant in the room. IT managers know that it is necessary to reduce costs and improve workload management but cringe over the potential impact to production. In the past, migrations have usually required significant planning, design and downtime, which is no longer acceptable.

Virtualizing Workloads: There Has to Be a Better Way

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:45:00 EDT

The need for moving, provisioning and migrating workloads in real-time for server and storage consolidation is necessary to help IT organizations deploy more efficient and flexible technology, as well as consolidate other site locations for centralized facility management. Many organizations have been reluctant to embrace migration projects because of downtime and interruption to production systems. This is no longer the case as the workload portability solution moves active workloads, eliminating downtime while keeping the data consistent – helping you avoid the challenges associated with the migration paradigm. Workload portability solutions also provide X2X migration regardless of distance or physical or virtual platform, facilitating an easier way to consolidate more flexible and dynamic data center infrastructure.

10 Tips for Recovering Data After Loss

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:45:00 EDT

So, you have just lost your most business critical application or worse yet the entire data center. What do you do? Unfortunately I have experienced these exact situations more than I would like but here are ten tips to get you through and more importantly what not to do.

Double-Take Software Compliments Business Continuity Testing for Hyper-V

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:30:00 EDT

Business continuity exercises have always been complicated and hard to exercise. There is significant planning involved to test the availability and recovery of the IT workloads and usually requires extensive downtime and effort from IT managers. Virtualization technology has helped IT managers with this process but that is primarily only for local high availability testing at the primary data center. The roll of a business continuity planner is to exercise the entire IT infrastructure and verify the workloads can be recovered and run at a functional level to restore critical business operations.

Microsoft Revving as VMworld Approaches

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:15:00 EST

The last few weeks Microsoft has been revving its engine and flexing its muscle all before VMworld approaches the starting line. What does it all mean for the future of the virtualization market? It all started a few weeks ago on February 4 when a Cnet article announced how EMC and Microsoft are extending their strategic partnership another three years since the initial agreement was forged in 2006.

Workload Optimization Presentation Can’t Be Missed

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:00:00 EST

Virtualisation enables multiple IT workloads to run on a single physical machine as virtual machines (VMs). Fewer physical machines can lead to reduced costs through lower hardware, energy, and management overhead, plus the creation of a more dynamic IT infrastructure. However, not every application can or will be virtualised and the adoption of virtualisation will bring with it a rise in the number of mixed physical and virtual environments. As a result, organizations of all sizes will struggle with the challenge of recovering and optimizing critical workloads in this more diverse IT landscape. While virtualisation has enabled new methods for predictable protection and recovery of physical workloads, at the same time it introduces new challenges for protecting virtualized workloads.

BCP Lessons Learned and New Ideas for IT Infrastructure Continuity

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:45:00 EST

Businesses in the southeastern United States have been hit hard with hurricanes in the last few years, and 2008 was no exception. As a project manager and CBCP for over 1600 disaster recovery deployments I can share real examples of how entire data centers were failed over to the DR operations center in preparation for hurricanes, while others (due to poor planning) did not have the same success. Those that were successful were efficient in organizing the RTO of their communication servers which helped them prioritize the recovery efforts as well utilize creative testing procedures in order to not disrupt normal business activity. The first priority of a BCP is to ensure the safety of the employees, but being able to communicate to those needed is also an important step for successfully executing a BCP. Because of this preparedness many businesses I have heard from were able to proactively allow their employees evacuate and still provide them remote access for business operations from almost anywhere. I will review a few of the examples of architecture, solutions and best practices for exercising controls in those events as well as discuss what future technology may be utilized to better help justify the creation of disaster recovery facilities.

How to Address IT Needs in Today's Economy Through Virtualization

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:15:00 EST

The current economic crisis is affecting how organizations look at their IT. Existing systems are being stretched to increase their value, while investment in new systems is under greater scrutiny than ever before. For the channel, customers are demanding more from their spending. While this is putting some "nice-to-have" projects in jeopardy, money is still available in IT budgets for initiatives that can deliver real results both now and in the future.

Business Continuity Planning for Maximizing Data Center Uptime

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST

Next to ensuring the safety, health and well being of your employees, the next most important business continuity task is resuming business-critical operations. Keeping servers highly available is what likely keeps most data center managers up at night. There is a higher probability that most data centers will be affected by a virus, hardware failure, power failure or upgrade gone wrong than by a more disastrous weather-related event like wind, fire or rain.