Maximizing Business Continuity and Minimizing Recovery Time Objectives in Windows Server Environments

Maximizing Business Continuity and
Minimizing Recovery Time Objectives
in Windows Server Environments

Contents
Executive Summary .................................................................................................................................3
Why is disaster recovery so difficult? ...................................................................................................... 4
Why is it important to simplify backup, recovery and migration? ............................................................ 5
Rapid Restore of Files and Folders ................................................................................................. 5
Rapid Recovery Following Server Failure ....................................................................................... 5
Migration to New Servers ............................................................................................................. 5
Verification of Backup Images....................................................................................................... 6
Notification of Backup Problems ................................................................................................... 6
Bottom Line ................................................................................................................................ 6
Rapid Recovery for Windows Servers....................................................................................................... 7
Backup Fast, Recover Faster ................................................................................................................... 9

Executive Summary
Maximizing business continuity while minimizing business disruption can be
especially challenging for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) following
a server failure. Resources are limited, so there isn’t a lot of help to get
systems back online. Having a server out of commission is never pleasant, but
the consequences of business disruption are grimmer for SMBs than they are
for large enterprises that can disperse the effect of a server meltdown.

That’s why it is vitally important to keep your Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
at a level that helps you avoid the serious consequences of a break in the flow
of your daily business. Your RTO is the maximum amount of time your systems
can be out of commission – from when a disruption occurs to the moment your
system is available again. Minimizing your RTO helps you avoid the
consequences of a long-term break in business continuity.

Unfortunately, most backup and recovery strategies are bound by
technological limitations. When your server has many terabytes (TB) of data
that must be recovered – not to mention the operating system and applications
– it takes many hours to restore everything from the original volume, even at
relatively rapid disk speeds.

In addition, the promise of virtualization may seem attractive for SMBs,
particularly since virtualization can help address limitations on resources. But the
reality of the cost and time expenditures to transfer data to virtual servers, in
addition to the complexity of virtualization technology, makes this prohibitive.

Finally, upgrading to a new Windows server can frustrate IT staff with its
complexity and potential for disaster. The migration process can place a
heavy load on SMBs with limited IT resources.

This white paper outlines each of these issues, why they are important for SMBs to
address and how to resolve them while maximizing business continuity and
minimizing IT resources necessary to accomplish the demands of maintaining
Windows servers.

Why is disaster recovery so difficult?
In the past 10 years many businesses have switched from tape-based backup
systems to disk-based backup. Tape systems tend to be difficult to manage and
much slower than disk-based systems not only for creating backup, but for
restoring them as well. In addition, the cost of disk-based storage continues to
drop every year. It’s now extremely affordable to purchase multi-TB disks, so disk
space is much less of an issue than it used to be.

Even businesses that are required to have tape backup for compliancy and
archival purposes have moved to hybrid systems because of the time factor
involved in recovery. The fastest tape backup cannot compete with the slowest
disk-based system for recovery times. When you need rapid disaster recovery,
when your RTO is hours, not days, you must have disk-based disaster recovery.

The problem is that disks, while becoming more affordable, have not become
any more reliable. Most industry estimates place the average disk lifespan
around five years. The truth is that hard disk drives fail. So wise
administrators prepare for that eventuality and anticipate how they will
recover when that drive failure occurs. When , not if.

Another issue is that even with the increased recovery speeds that disk-based
storage offers, restoring a server is still a time-consuming process. Traditionally,
when a disk drive fails, IT administrators must repair the server, if possible, re-
install the operating system, re-install applications, and then add data file
backups, if they are available. This process of rebuilding a server can take days –
time your business can ill-afford to lose.

In addition, migrating to a new server is an equally painful process, requiring weeks
of planning and days to execute – if all goes well.

As a result of these limitations, many SMBs choose to avoid the issue
altogether, deciding that a server disaster recovery plan is too painful a process
to contemplate. Or they continue with a backup solution that is too
complicated or does not meet the needs of a growing business. Day-to-day
server problems are ignored or placed on the backburner. This is not a safe and
secure way to assure business continuity or data availability.

Why is it important to simplify backup, recovery and
migration?
Your data is one of your most valued resources. Nearly every modern business
relies on servers, large and small, to conduct everyday operations. Not only do
you need access to applications such as Microsoft Exchange and SQL server, you
need access to all the information on your servers all of the time. Extended
downtime is not an option.

Managing your backups also needs to be a straightforward process, without
consuming too much time administrating your server backup technology or
the process of recovery. IT administrators do not have the time to spend
hours or days learning new systems and new processes. Backup technology
must be simple to learn and easy to manage.

There are many real-world requirements of simplifying server backup, recovery

and migration.

Rapid Restore of Files and Folders

At one time or another, most users have accidentally deleted files or folders they
need. Servers don’t have a recycle bin the way desktops do, so administrators must
have a way to resolve those day-to-day “oops” moments.

Without a granular backup, IT administrators may have to restore an entire
server backup to access specific files and folders. Since this process can take
hours, many administrators are reluctant to perform a brick-level restore for just
a few missing files.

Rapid Recovery Following Server Failure
Nothing makes an administrator’s heart skip a beat more than the words
“server failure.” Whether it’s hard disk drives failing, power surges,
misconfigurations or simple acts of God, it’s a situation you will end up facing
at one time or another.

Rebuilding a server from the ground up is a time-consuming process that
means repairing the server – if possible – then loading the operating system,
applications and finally the data, if you’re able to access the data at all. Many
times you may have to start from scratch or use other sources to
painstakingly recover what you’ve lost.

Migration to New Servers
Upgrading to a new server is a difficult and daunting task that can cause all
kinds of problems for IT administrators. The standard procedure is to take all
users off-line – say, on a Friday evening – take a complete and final backup of
the old server, then take the server offline. Then using the wizards and tools
provided with the Windows servers, migrate the old server to the new one.
This process can take a significant amount of time and IT resources to
complete, while crossing your fingers that all goes well and that there a ren’t
any problems during the migration process.

As many businesses investigate virtualization technology administrators must
find new tools to help them migrate to virtual servers from physical servers.
Not all tools are created equally and you may not be sure if your server,
applications and data will migrate safely to a new, virtual environment.

Verification of Backup Images
Even if you have backup technology, how sure are you that your backups will work
when you need them to? Many times your backup will work when it’s created and
then disk corruption or drive failure will make your backup unusable down the line.

Notification of Backup Problems
With many systems to manage and users to assist, many IT administrators
don’t have a way to check on their backups. Once they’ve set it, they’d like
to forget it. But without some sort of notification, it may be like turning your
back on the ocean. Just because you can’t see that something has gone
wrong doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem about to hit you from behind.

Bottom Line
It’s vital to have a complete backup of your Windows servers and data in the
event of a catastrophic failure. You need to be able to recover files and folders
quickly, but it’s far too time-consuming to restore your server with only a file-
level backup following a disaster or when migrating to a new server.

In addition, it’s very important to have a simple way to keep tabs on your server
backups that doesn’t require a lot of time or money.

Rapid Recovery for Windows Servers

Cloudnition ServerSave ServerTM 4.0 allows you to backup your Windows
servers quickly and easily, and recover rapidly in the event of a disaster.
ServerSave Server is fast and reliable disk-based backup that captures full,
differential and incremental point-in-time backup images of your entire
system. That includes the operating system, applications, configuration
settings and data.

With ServerSave Server, you can schedule full and incremental backups,
giving you automatic protection of everything on your Windows servers. You
can schedule automatic backups as often as every 15 minutes, even backing
up applications such as SQL or Exchange. ServerSave’s point-in-time backup
image technology runs in the background without impacting everyday
business or throughput speeds.

In addition, ServerSave’s flexibility gives you a number of recovery options.
Restore from bare metal through the bootable ServerSave recovery CD, or
restore a complete ServerSave backup image of your entire system
environment from your network, a removable drive or an off-site location.
ServerSave allows you to recover rapidly

because there are no extra steps for recovery. After repairing your server, you
restore your point-in-time ServerSave backup image and you’re ready to go –

the server operating system, applications and data are all contained in the
backup image file.

For granular recovery of individual files and folders, simply mount a point-in-
time backup image file and then quickly browse to the files you need. If you
want, you can drag and drop folders to your production server or leave the
point-in-time backup image mounted to allow users to find the files they
need.

ServerSave Server makes migrating to new servers – even virtual servers – a
relatively simple prospect. It includes Hardware Independent RestoreTM (HIR)
technology that helps automate migration to dissimilar hardware or to and
from virtual environments.

VirtualBootTM is revolutionary new technology in ServerSave Server.
VirtualBoot allows you to right-click on any ServerSave Server point-in-time
backup image and automatically boot it as a virtual machine. You can use this
technology to test new applications for your server environment or to restore
archived information from legacy systems. For complete conversion to virtual
environments, ServerSave Server also includes a virtual converter. Take a
ServerSave point-in-time backup image and convert it to a VMware .VMDK or
a Microsoft .VHD file.

Streamline management of ServerSave backups with an integrated
management console that allows you to simultaneously push install
ServerSave to all of your Windows servers. You can also check the status of
your system backups and create groupings for simplified management.

Another tool, ServerSave ImageManagerTM also allows you to consolidate your
backup image files to minimize storage consumption for your backup images. With
a minimal amount of set up, ServerSave ImageManager will automatically collapse
your image files into daily, weekly and monthly backups and notify you via e-mail if
any of your backups fail.

ServerSave ImageManager also has a verification feature which will
automatically check and re-check all of your backup image files. If there is
ever a problem, if a disk drive begins to fail or a backup image file is
accidentally deleted, ServerSave ImageManager will alert you to the problem.

Backup Fast, Recover Faster
ServerSave Server helps you maximize business continuity while minimizing your RTO. It
eliminates backup windows through the use of image-based technology to perform online
backups of Windows servers. Backups happen throughout the day, so there’s no impact on
business performance and even new data is protected because it is backed up.

But ServerSave Server also takes business continuity to the next level by minimizing
recovery windows. Limiting the time required to restore server systems and data helps
you get business back up and running in a matter of minutes, rather than hours. Every
minute you lose in recovery time is income and productivity lost. Minimize recovery time
and you maximize your profits.

For additional information about ServerSave Server, please visit:
www.Cloudnition.com/ServerSave.

Maximizing Business Continuity and Minimizing Recovery Time Objectives in Windows Server Environments

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