business Are You Ready for A DISASTER? BY WILLIAM R. CUNNINGHAM, OWNER OF REGGIE’S PC RESOURCES (RPCR) I t is very probable that the computer system in your home or office will experience a disaster causing you to lose your data (company files, family pictures, music, etc.). Would you be prepared? Would you or your company be able to survive a disaster? Unfortunately many people do not think about their computer systems and files until something goes awry. It is then too late because the time to be ready for a disaster is before it strikes not afterwards. The purpose of this article is to provide information that can be used to get you started in preparing for a disaster and to develop a disaster recovery plan for your home or business. TYPES OF DISASTERS A disaster can come in various forms and is different for each person or business. It could range from accidentally deleting a folder on a shared drive, a hard drive crash or a server malfunction. Disasters can come as a result of natural disasters, computer viruses, fire, theft, human error, system or component failure, or many other ways. In any case being prepared will help minimize the effect of the disaster. HOW TO BE PREPARED FOR A DISASTER The best way to be prepared for a disaster is to think about your system before a disaster happens and then take action. Do you have a plan if the computer crashes with all of your company data on it or family photos? Begin to think about what would happen and what you would do if for example your internet connection went down at the office. Determine what your options are and take action. WHAT CAN YOU DO NOW? Plan. If nothing else establish a good backup system for your files. Contact Reggie’s PC Resources to help you evaluate your needs and help develop a disaster recovery plan. Think about how you would continue with normal operations (home or office) if your system went down for whatever reason and begin to develop a plan to minimize the effect of that based on your needs and budget. SOME OPTIONS There are many options available to help you to recover after a disaster. These options range from a simple backup system, cloud storage, Infrastructure as a Service for businesses, redundant systems (co-location), redundant internet connections, security measures, and more. The bottom line is to plan and establish the resources and systems that will be activated if a disaster occurs. Evaluate your risk and develop a disaster recovery solution that fits your own budget. Of course Reggie’s PC Resources can help you with this. Above all. Do not wait for a disaster to come before you are prepared for it. The sooner you start preparing for a disaster the sooner you will be ready WHEN it comes. BACKUPS The first line of defense against disasters is to have a backup of all of your data. With an up-to-date backup you could at least restore your data to another system. Be sure to evaluate the restore process when you are considering a backup solution. After all, the greatest value of a backup system is its ability to restore your data so being familiar with that process is important—again before the disaster. I recommend a cloud backup solution such as Carbonite to further protect you from disasters involving your facility/home. Visit our backup portal at http://partners. carbonite.com/rpcr to get started backing up your files. Visit us online at www.rpcr.com, or contact us by email at support@ rpcr.com or by phone at 215.362.0967 CLOUD SOLUTIONS You have probably heard the term “cloud” by now regarding Internet technologies. In the old days the Internet was depicted as a cloud in diagrams. So cloud storage is basically storage that is purchased from a provider that is accessed via the Internet. Some familiar examples of cloud storage is Microsoft’s OneDrive and Dropbox (both have business solutions). It is also possible to establish a virtual environment (e.g., virtual servers, virtual desktops) that can be replicated in the cloud. In this scenario if your primary location (using a virtual environment) experiences a disaster then you could activate (spin up) your virtual environment in the cloud to keep your business running until the primary location is operational again. LehighWomen.com April/May 2015 13
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