Ask the Experts

Ask the Experts

• Where does security fit into a business continuity plan?

  Cybersecurity breaches are a prominent threat to business continuity today. Make sure your security and BCDR teams are in sync to recover data in a crisis.  Continue Reading

• Business resilience vs. business continuity: Key differences

  Business continuity and resilience go hand in hand and play a role in an organization's disaster recovery plan. Essentially, business continuity is needed to achieve resilience.  Continue Reading

• What is the role of qualitative and quantitative impact in DR?

  Disaster recovery planners use several metrics to craft a plan suited to their organizations. Quantitative and qualitative impact are two helpful metrics in a recovery strategy.  Continue Reading

• What are some examples of organizational resilience?

  Organizational resilience encompasses everything a company needs to run in times of crisis. These examples show how businesses handle tough situations.  Continue Reading

• How do risk assessment costs vary and why?

  Risk assessments help identify and, more importantly, prioritize activities an organization needs to address its most serious threats and vulnerabilities. However, costs may vary.  Continue Reading

• How can a pandemic business continuity plan cover employees?

  A major element in maintaining business continuity during a pandemic is taking care of employee health. Pandemic-specific planning must be a part of the overall BCDR plan.  Continue Reading

• 12 steps for a successful DRaaS implementation

  Thinking of activating disaster recovery as a service? As you start this important process, consider these best practices that will help protect your organization.  Continue Reading

• What will disaster recovery strategy look like in 2020?

  Disaster recovery planning is an ever-evolving process, and organizations should be aware of new threats and tools. Ensure that your strategy isn't behind the times in 2020.  Continue Reading

• When is having a cloud-based disaster recovery plan critical?

  Cloud disaster recovery is accessible, affordable and reliable and has become a strong alternative to on-premises DR. In some situations, it may even be essential.  Continue Reading

• What is the role of HCI in a disaster recovery architecture?

  Is hyper-convergence a good fit for disaster recovery? More organizations appear to believe so and are increasingly using hyper-converged infrastructure in backup and DR.  Continue Reading

• How do a business impact analysis and risk assessment differ?

  When it comes to disaster recovery strategy, business impact analyses and risk assessments both play key roles. Make sure you include them in your DR planning.  Continue Reading

• What are the benefits of outsourcing risk mitigation and management?

  Rather than handling risk management and mitigation within your organization, outsourcing these important processes to a third party comes with substantial benefits.  Continue Reading

• How can your IT resilience plan incorporate big data analytics?

  Big data analytics can help businesses spot past mistakes, forecast conditions and improve future strategies. So, why should resilience planning be any different?  Continue Reading

• How does a data archiving strategy benefit DR and backup?

  In order to be truly resilient, your organization needs more than just a backup and disaster recovery plan. Integrating archiving into your strategy offers some serious benefits.  Continue Reading

• What DR requirements belong in a cloud computing SLA?

  Many organizations are making the move to DRaaS. But, before you dive in, be sure the cloud provider's SLA meets the needs of your business and its end users.  Continue Reading

• Is VMware SRM disaster recovery a good fit for your DR plan?

  VMware Site Recovery Manager brings a number of benefits to the disaster recovery process. One of the lesser known roles of SRM is as a planning tool.  Continue Reading

• Can you use blockchain for disaster recovery purposes?

  Disaster recovery may not be the most prominent use case for blockchain technology, but the idea of using it for data protection and recovery is beginning to gain traction.  Continue Reading

• How do slow data transfer speeds affect VM disaster recovery?

  When failing over VMs to the cloud or a remote data center, slow data transfer speeds can spell disaster. Don't let failed replications and partial failovers upset your DR plan.  Continue Reading

• What are the benefits of disaster recovery orchestration?

  A disaster recovery plan that uses orchestration can simplify the process of failing VMs over to the cloud. Unfortunately, there are some caveats to take into account.  Continue Reading

• How has ransomware recovery changed in recent years?

  The threat of ransomware has evolved over the past few years, causing many organizations to re-examine how they plan to recover data in the event of an attack.  Continue Reading

• Can your disaster recovery strategy keep up?

  Disaster recovery requirements are constantly changing, and a DR plan must do the same. Frequent testing and clear communication can go a long way toward keeping a plan up to date.  Continue Reading

• Cloud disaster recovery options: Public or purpose-built?

  Despite the popularity of public cloud for disaster recovery, it's not the only option out there. Purpose-built clouds can offer greater flexibility and provider assistance.  Continue Reading

• What are the pros and cons of on-premises disaster recovery?

  While cloud DR is gaining popularity, it may not be the right choice for every organization. On-premises DR often comes with more predictable pricing and lower latency.  Continue Reading

• How does VMware Admission Control work?

  Get to know VMware vSphere's Admission Control tool and use it to reserve the resources necessary for VM failover with cluster resource calculations and slot policy.  Continue Reading

• How does vSphere HA application monitoring work?

  Use heartbeats, VM monitoring and application monitoring to fully examine the causes of VM unresponsiveness. Adjust sensitivity levels to focus on the level of detail you need.  Continue Reading

• Ensure VM high availability with vSphere DRS and HA

  Combine Distributed Resource Scheduler and vSphere High Availability to design balanced failover clusters. Pay attention to affinity rules, which can further support availability.  Continue Reading

• How does vSphere high availability affect VM restart order?

  If you encounter a VM failure, you can use vSphere HA to automatically detect and restart VMs. Before you restart the VMs, you'll also need to meet resource and host criteria.  Continue Reading

• What's the difference between a hot site and cold site for DR?

  The hot site vs. cold site debate requires users to understand how each DR site works and the resources needed. While one is more budget-friendly, downtime can be a deciding factor.  Continue Reading

• How to create an emergency phone tree and template

  When disaster strikes an organization, employees must be alerted. Using a call tree in emergency situations is a time-tested way to effectively communicate events and next steps.  Continue Reading

• What 5 skills should a disaster recovery team leader have?

  Is the right person in charge of your disaster recovery planning? Look for a DR team leader who has the knowledge to run the show and the accessibility needed from a good manager.  Continue Reading

• Can an SMB business continuity strategy compete with larger firms?

  When crafting a business continuity plan, an SMB must try and meet customers' enterprise-level expectations, while using its available resources to the fullest.  Continue Reading

• What standards for business continuity aid in compliance?

  Business continuity and disaster recovery compliance is a valuable asset and may require a deeper understanding of modern standards and changes your organization needs to make.  Continue Reading

• What does the ISO 22330 business continuity standard cover?

  With ISO/TS 22330, the International Organization for Standardization covers the issues related to the people involved in BCDR incident response.  Continue Reading

• Is your cloud DR strategy agile enough?

  As business requirements evolve, not every DR tool can keep up. In the age of agile IT, there are drawbacks to consider with a cloud-based disaster recovery strategy.  Continue Reading

• Which modern disaster recovery tool is often overlooked?

  When crafting a DR strategy, there are a number of useful tools available. To avoid missing out on some serious benefits, make sure you take a look at all available options.  Continue Reading

• How does the ISO 22316 standard cover resilience?

  Definitions for business continuity and resilience sometimes clash, but both processes help an organization stay on its feet. A new ISO standard tackles the latter.  Continue Reading

• What are vital elements of a workplace emergency response plan?

  Emergency response planning needs to be specific and varied enough that it will enable an organization to recover in the event of many different kinds of incidents.  Continue Reading

• What is a short business continuity history?

  From mainframes to the cloud, the business continuity profession has seen a lot over the decades. How did we get to the business continuity process of today?  Continue Reading

• Which data protection trends will take off next?

  Expect data protection technologies to veer toward an expansion of recovery capabilities, as organizations need to be able to recover in multiple locations -- and fast.  Continue Reading

• What are the top disaster recovery trends for 2018?

  Expect disaster recovery market trends to include consolidation and simplification. Vendors should also note that quick failover and recovery time remain top needs for customers.  Continue Reading

• How do I design and initiate a call tree procedure?

  A call tree can be an important piece of disaster recovery planning. Follow these steps for call tree design and execution to ensure your company is ready for unplanned events.  Continue Reading

• How do you choose between file- and block-level replication?

  Block- and file-level replication each offer important benefits, but for different applications. Learn the use cases of each in this Expert Answer.  Continue Reading

• What are the top five ways to train personnel in disaster response?

  What are the five best ways to ensure personnel are trained in disaster response and ready to respond to a disaster event?  Continue Reading

• What are some common VMware High Availability configuration errors?

  What are the most common mistakes people make when configuring VMware High Availability?  Continue Reading

• Why the change management process is important for DR

  Paul Kirvan discusses the importance of the change management process for disaster recovery in this Expert Answer.  Continue Reading

• Include the VoIP system in your disaster recovery planning process

  Independent disaster recovery planning expert Paul Kirvan discusses why your VoIP system must be part of the disaster recovery planning process.  Continue Reading

• Your disaster recovery planning process must include your phone system

  Independent disaster recovery planning expert Paul Kirvan discusses why your disaster recovery planning process must include your phone system.  Continue Reading

• Maximum tolerable period of disruption (MTPOD) vs. RTO and RPO

  Learn what maximum tolerable period of disruption (MTPOD) means for disaster recovery planners vs. the terms RTO and RPO.  Continue Reading

• What is a business impact analysis questionnaire and what types of questions should be included?

  Harvey Betan explains that a BIA questionnaire is used to gather valuable and important data about a company, the industry and other background information in this expert response.  Continue Reading

• What's the difference between a disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan?

  Kevin Beaver describes the difference between disaster recovery and business continuity planning in this ask the expert response.  Continue Reading