Seeing images of the damage from Hurricane Sandy cannot help but instill in us a sense of urgency to dust off our own disaster recovery plans.B Now would be a really good time to use the experiences of companies directly affected by the storm for b real worldb examples of what to plan for.
One of the issues that I believe should be addressed is geographic diversity.B While I see lots of companies (and many of our clients) moving their data infrastructure to collocation facilities, I donb t see much attention given to spreading things out.
If your company is in Manhattan and your data is in a collocation facility in New Jersey, you have convenient access when necessary but you havenb t done much to eliminate a problem that is regional.B The effects of this b frankenstormb are still being felt across New York, New Jersey, Virginia and beyond.
Rather, your collocation facility should be chosen for its geographic diversity from your main location.B This makes moving to a virtual server environment even more appealing.B With virtual servers, you donb t have anything physical to manage so your only concern is where your cloud service provider collocates THEIR physical equipment.
The b best in classb could services providers have their equipment replicated at several collocation facilities with good geographic diversity.B Think west coast, east coast, central b north and/or south.
We have several great options if youb re considering moving your data to the b Cloudb .B The companies that had good disaster recovery plans in place when Sandy hit are still in business and can focus their energy on recovery.
