Network Disaster Recovery

Network disaster recovery is just as important as their high profile cousins like data centers. Typically the IT executives think a lot about disaster recovery. Cool but… As companies continue to consolidate resources - data centers, facilities, and networks - the need for redundancy becomes critical.

Network disaster recovery – oh the links themselves!

One issue is that, in their rush to back up their systems and facilities, executives overlook back-up strategies for their networks. In today's distributed environment, with so many interdependencies on data and applications, losing network connectivity can totally circumvent an organizations ability to function just as effectively as a massive system or data center outage.

Network disaster recovery – what to do!

Ensure physical redundancy.

Make sure you have physical redundancy in your cable runs (even if the circuits are provided by different carriers, you might need to ascertain if the providers are sharing strands of the same cable).

Ensure logical redundancy. Check that your IP services have alternate routes. Multi-home your IP links or set up a redundant connection to an IP network access point served by multiple IP providers.

Check for carrier facility and power redundancy. It doesn't do any good to connect to a carrier POP if the switches are down because the power is out. Make sure your service providers have back-up sources (including diesel generators).

Protect remote offices and workers. Don't assume everything's fine just because your site-to-site connectivity is in place. Many times, remote offices lose all functionality if they can't connect back to centralized data and applications.

Telephony Systems. Make sure your voice network is backed up as effectively as your data WAN. One of our customers can live with a LAN outage for a while but the proverbial hits the fan if they lose voice!

Test regularly. You would not believe how many times I get told by customers that they have an effective strategy but, has it ever been fully tested? Usually not. It does take a lot of intestinal fortitude to accept the risk of a Full test – done by the CEO in the middle of the night (or day) where he says something like disconnect the power and lets see if the people we pay the big money to have earned it!

Communications plan. Figure out how to alert staff in the event of an outage, or even a test.