SQL Database Administrator at Aurora Mental Health Center
Real User
Top 5
2021-10-05T20:20:20Z
Oct 5, 2021
We use a combination of Veeam for Hyper-V Hosts and VMs and Zerto for VMware VMs. Everything is on-site except for Exchange which was moved to the cloud when we upgraded to M365 with a backup also in the cloud.
For automation, both Zerto and Veeam work with minor help and can be integrated with scripts to help the process.
The benefit is they can be tested on a regular basis in a sandbox area to make sure the backups in the DR site are valid without interrupting current backups or production. Complete Failover accomplished within an hour with data loss of 15 minutes. (Careful, as the fail back to production takes much longer, estimated 8 hours! Unless you prepare a second failover on the production side then you are back to only an hour with minor interruption of data loss during the moving process.)
Simply put, this software does exactly what is designed to do. It delivers a backup and disaster recovery platform that works flawlessly. It is a turnkey solution that provides local and remote backup, file recovery, DR and archive that is managed in one, very easy to use interface. Configuration of the platform is a breeze. I have been using this platform for almost 10 years and it has never failed to do its job. Everyone at Quorum is super easy to work with from the account managers to the implementation team and the technical support staff. They were very thorough with pre-purchase discovery, making sure we got exactly what we needed. There was a lot of pre-deployment discussion concerning our environment and they were on top of every aspect of the initial deployment, even dispatching an onsite technician to assist. Any time we have had a technical or configuration issue, Quorum's tech support team is extremely responsive and they stick with the issue until it is resolved. I am running the platform on its own on-prem hardware that Quorum provided and preconfigured. This is in contrast to solutions I have used in the past that required me to provide hardware and configuration
It depends what you mean by 'Automation'. We use a backup product that does all the usual stuff (incremental backup to the cloud on a schedule, holds local copies, encryption blah blah etc. etc.). If you know what you are doing you can build yourself a recovery appliance that holds the latest backup as a stand-by image in a ready-to-start form. Every time the system detects a fresh backup increment, the stand-by increments to match, so you always have the latest backup of your system one click away from starting up. What's neat is that you can have this recovery appliance on or off the target site - or both, or as many locations as you want. We normally have the recovery appliance on the client's site (in a different part of the building) and also keep a copy on an appliance here in our machine room. It's so easy to do that I test-boot the latest stand-by images (for most of our clients) on a weekly basis just to validate the process. (A backup is only as good as your last validation...) And it can all be managed remotely!
Testing your disaster recovery plan is crucial to ensure that your organization is prepared to minimize downtime in the event of a disaster. Here are some steps you can take to test your disaster recovery plan:
Define Test Scenarios: Define test scenarios that simulate real-world disaster scenarios. These scenarios should be designed to test specific aspects of your disaster recovery plan, such as data recovery, network failover, and application availability.
Involve All Relevant Parties: Involve all relevant parties in the testing process, including IT staff, business unit leaders, and third-party vendors. This will help to ensure that everyone is on the same page and understands their role in the event of a disaster.
Document Test Results: Document the results of each test scenario, including any issues or areas for improvement. This will help you to refine your disaster recovery plan and ensure that it's as effective as possible.
Test Regularly: Test your disaster recovery plan on a regular basis, such as quarterly or bi-annually. This will help to ensure that your plan remains up-to-date and effective in the face of evolving threats and technologies.
Automate Where Possible: Automate as much of the testing process as possible, such as data replication, failover, and recovery. This will help to minimize the risk of human error and improve the overall efficiency of your disaster recovery plan.
By following these steps, you can test your disaster recovery plan to work on minimizing downtime and ensure that your organization is prepared to quickly recover from a disaster.
IT Manager Infrastructure&DBA at SplashBI On-Demand Reporting and BI
Apr 3, 2023
Testing your disaster recovery plan is an essential step to ensure that it will work effectively in minimizing downtime. There are several ways to test your disaster recovery plan, and the following are some suggestions to consider:
Tabletop Exercises: Tabletop exercises are simulations that test the effectiveness of your disaster recovery plan. They involve gathering key stakeholders together to walk through various scenarios and discuss how they would respond. This exercise can help identify any gaps or weaknesses in your plan, and can help refine your processes.
Partial Failover Tests: Partial failover tests involve testing a subset of your IT systems to see if they can failover to your disaster recovery site. This test helps identify any issues with your failover processes and can help refine your failover procedures.
Full Failover Tests: Full failover tests involve testing all of your IT systems to see if they can failover to your disaster recovery site. This test is more comprehensive than the partial failover test and can help identify any issues with your entire IT infrastructure.
Unannounced Tests: Unannounced tests involve testing your disaster recovery plan without informing your IT team in advance. This test can help identify how quickly your team can respond to a disaster recovery situation and can help refine your communication processes.
Production Failover Tests: Production failover tests involve testing your disaster recovery plan during a planned outage of your production environment. This test can help identify any issues with your failover processes and can help refine your procedures.
It is important to note that testing your disaster recovery plan should be done on a regular basis to ensure that it remains effective and relevant. It is also important to document and analyze the results of your tests to identify areas for improvement and to update your plan accordingly.
SQL Database Administrator at Aurora Mental Health Center
Mar 17, 2023
The key to recovery from a Ransomware attack is the boy scout motto "Be Prepared". In our case, not only did we have backups at the DR site but both the Production site and DR site each had a NAS on a different subnet with different Admin passwords that had backup copies, so 4 total backups. We also were using iSCSI connections to our SAN which the ransomware was not able to cross when they polluted the connection file. This was an unexpected bonus. We were basically back up and running in 4 hours after wiping and restoring files. Lessons learned were to separate as much as possible so if one part of the domain/forest gets corrupted it cannot travel to the other areas. We now use Veeam for Hyper-V windows VMs and Zerto for VMware VMs, another separation of business functions with different admin passwords. Nothing is foolproof but by making it as difficult as possible then makes more time to catch and stop the attack sooner.
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Arpio is an excellent tool for DR Orchestration for AWS-based solutions. See Arpio.io.
We use a combination of Veeam for Hyper-V Hosts and VMs and Zerto for VMware VMs. Everything is on-site except for Exchange which was moved to the cloud when we upgraded to M365 with a backup also in the cloud.
For automation, both Zerto and Veeam work with minor help and can be integrated with scripts to help the process.
The benefit is they can be tested on a regular basis in a sandbox area to make sure the backups in the DR site are valid without interrupting current backups or production. Complete Failover accomplished within an hour with data loss of 15 minutes. (Careful, as the fail back to production takes much longer, estimated 8 hours! Unless you prepare a second failover on the production side then you are back to only an hour with minor interruption of data loss during the moving process.)
Veeam and Commvault have very good tools for DRP automation.
Vmware SRM with VCF or Cloud7.
Here is a user endorsement for
Quorum Backup & Recovery
It depends what you mean by 'Automation'. We use a backup product that does all the usual stuff (incremental backup to the cloud on a schedule, holds local copies, encryption blah blah etc. etc.). If you know what you are doing you can build yourself a recovery appliance that holds the latest backup as a stand-by image in a ready-to-start form. Every time the system detects a fresh backup increment, the stand-by increments to match, so you always have the latest backup of your system one click away from starting up. What's neat is that you can have this recovery appliance on or off the target site - or both, or as many locations as you want. We normally have the recovery appliance on the client's site (in a different part of the building) and also keep a copy on an appliance here in our machine room. It's so easy to do that I test-boot the latest stand-by images (for most of our clients) on a weekly basis just to validate the process. (A backup is only as good as your last validation...) And it can all be managed remotely!
Are you talking about virtualized machines or physical machines? If they are virtualized, on which platform they are virtualized? VMware or HyperV?
For VMware platform I can recommend vSphere Replication & SRM.
What backup software are you using ? Both Veeam & Druva comes with DR orchestration