Sessions in detail

Track 2: Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery isn’t just about being able to resume business as quickly as possible after a catastrophic incident. It’s also about avoiding the situations that could jeopardize your company’s reputation and good standing -- like the loss of customer data.

But DR isn’t a one-size-fits-all affair, with different company assets requiring varying levels of protection and recoverability. We’ll look at some of the new tools for testing DR readiness, DR issues related to specific types of data and how virtualization can affect a DR plan, among other topics.

Replication Alternatives for DR

Presented by Marc Staimer, CDS, Dragon Slayer Consulting

Remote replication has become the method of choice for maintaining up to date, restorable data replicas at remote DR sites. There are a variety ways of implementing replication, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, and within a wide range of costs. This session will focus on replication architectures and administration, including:

* Host-based vs. switch or appliance-based vs. array-based replication
* Storage system requirements
* Communications requirements
* The most popular replication products -- key features, benefits and shortcomings of each

Stuff Happens -- How to Assess Risks and Set Objectives for Business Continuity Plans

Presented by Jon Toigo, CEO and Managing Principal, Toigo Partners International, and Chairman of the Data Management Institute

Many disaster recovery planning efforts get bogged down when planners become preoccupied with identifying all of the risk scenarios that might impact company operations. Truth be told, enumerating natural and man-made hazard potentials, then assigning quantitative values to their likelihood of occurrence, is a fool's errand. What is needed is a straightforward assessment of assets -- data and infrastructure -- to determine what needs to be protected, supplemented by an estimation of the cost of an interruption of access to assets (from whatever the cause) for 24, 48 and 72 hours. The sources for collecting this information are business stakeholders: so, yes, you will need to talk to end users (audible groans expected.) In this session, DR planning veteran Jon Toigo will walk you through the process for doing a good job with upfront analysis.