Event Follow-up: Is Your Disaster Recovery Approach a Disaster?

PTS Data Center Solutions, in conjunction with Quorum, hosted a particularly relevant event on December 4th. With over 20 industry executives and Backup & Disaster Recovery experts meeting at the Chart House in Weehawken, NJ, PTS and Quorum discussed the need for improved backup and disaster recovery solutions aimed at the Small- to Mid-size business sector.

"The event was originally scheduled for November 7th but we all know what had just taken place the week before - Hurricane Sandy", said Larry Davis, VP, IT Solutions Group for PTS. "If we could have only spread the word earlier and gotten the Quorum solution out to clients without a clear Disaster Recovery plan, the solution really works for a reasonable price."

Developed by Quorum engineers several years ago as a simple to deploy and use alternative to expensive redundant server, storage, and virtualization platform approaches, the Quorum solution has been a hit within market sectors ranging from:

• Schools
• Banks
• Financial Services
• Law Practices
• Accounting Firms
• Manufacturers
• Municipalities

With premises-based appliances, cloud solutions available for offsite recovery, and archive systems for long term storage requirements, the Quorum onQ solution can be deployed rapidly without any other hardware or software needed.

At the event, Quorum engineers provided a live demonstration of a server failure and the One-Click Recovery™ inherent in the onQ solution's design:

• Current Forever: Each ultra-efficient update is merged into the onQ device which houses virtual machine recovery nodes, full current images of client servers and virtual servers.
• Ready-to-Run: The approach doesn't wait until you need to recover to build your virtual recovery nodes, allowing one-click recovery at any time.
• Point-in-Time Recovery: Even though changes are merged into the ready-to-run recovery node, you can restore files or an entire system to a prior state. This is a perfect fit for business and organizations needing the ability to store and recover 7 years of data for regulatory purposes.

To learn more, visit PTS' website, watch the onQ video on the YouTube Data Center channel, or contact PTS at sales@ptsdcs.com

Top 10 Ways Colocation Can Impact Your Business

For most primary data center or computer room operations, PTS Data Center Solutions contends that owning and operating your own data center offers the best opportunity for long-term ROI, flexibility, and OPEX cost control. However, owning your own facility comes with a CAPEX premium - and that is sometimes not an option. To that end, it may be worth considering a colocation company to support your data center infrastructure requirements. 

Here are our Top 10 reasons to consider a colocation:

1. Reliability. Have you checked your tier rating lately? The Uptime Institute's tier rating system provides higher ratings for facilities which have several levels of redundancy for power, cooling, etc. The costs are significant for a company to build many levels of redundancy throughout its data center or computer room (i.e. design costs, procurement of equipment and services, management costs).
2. Flexibility. Are your typical power requirements at 2.5 KW per rack? Needing a facility capable of supporting blade servers with 10 KW per rack requirements? Consider a colocation specializing in high per rack power requirements. They'll also have the appropriate cooling systems in place.
3. Speed to Deploy. Did management forget to tell you early about a new acquisition and the need to add disparate IT solutions in your data center? Colocation providers typically have ample availability, ready for IT build-outs, at a moment's notice. Sure, you won't be in tomorrow, but a few weeks will do.
4. Security. There's a cost of doing business for colocations in terms of physical and network security. Services include providing protection from theft and fire, but also may include well conceived network security designs. And, if needed, you can look for a facility with 7x24 security.
5. Facility Size. Tired of the endless guessing games related to sizing a facility? Colocations can actually save an organization money because it doesn't have to over-size power, space, and cooling in the facility.  
6. Maintenance. Too many assets to maintain between servers, storage, UPS, cooling, switching, etc.? Think of the time you would save not having to worry about supporting infrastructure and being able to concentrate on keeping the IT infrastructure up-to-date.  
7. Capital Budgetary Constraints. Waiting for your CAPEX budget to be released? What if you can forget about the capital to expand or build a new facility? Colocation monthly fees fall into the operating expense or OPEX category.  
8. Network Management & Monitoring. Is your facility manned 7x24? Many colocation facilities have around-the-clock network operations personnel ready and waiting for a failure. Sure beats yanking the IT manager out of bed. 
9. WAN Connectivity. What happens when the network goes down? Colocation providers have facilities from more than one network services provider and, because of the volume of services, can provide truly separate infrastructures.
10. Offsite Backup & Disaster Recovery. Still taking tapes offsite? Worried about the financial impact of a data center down condition? How about the peace of mind knowing you stored your critical data offsite at a colocation specializing in backup and disaster recovery?  

All these reasons should be considered when looking at colocation or, for that matter, cloud services. If you are looking for expert advice and analysis relevant to your particular scenario, consider PTS' Data Center Facility Business Strategy Consulting Services. The service analyzes your situation, evaluates potential risks, hidden costs, and other items which can affect making the right decision.