Leveraging AWS for quick and efficient DR sites
Disaster usually strikes without a warning. Most enterprises try to insure against all forms and types of disaster by various means and methods that have worked in their previous experience. In most cases the Business Continuity Plan works on one principal- segment, duplicate and secure.
The most common strategy for disaster recovery is segmentation of teams and duplication of infrastructure and data of teams and data. Essentially, positioning teams and data centres in different locations is generally considered the best DR strategy. It is assumed that disaster will not strike in two or more places simultaneously, so safety is assured! But what all these methods don’t promise is foolproof recovery at reasonable cost.
The cost of redundant IT infrastructure and the additional team adds to the budget too. It is not only a capital investment for most enterprises but there is also an opex component of running and maintaining DR sites on an ongoing basis. In addition, there are instances where the regulation needs them to have their DR sites located at specified regions, depending on the size of the company. These sites need to be then maintained and audited too, for compliance to BCP strategies. The sheer volume of the planning and maintenance that goes into the upkeep of these multi-locational sites is an expensive logistics and operational nightmare. Enterprises tend to compromise on their DR strategy due to these financial and operational challenges.
The cloud provides the perfect solution to all these issues, while ensuring multiple advantages over physical data centres even in multiple locations. The biggest advantage is that while creating a DR on cloud, only the requisite infrastructure needs to be provisioned and paid for on an hourly basis. Enterprises save additional costs when compared to a physical data centre as well, because an on premise data centre has fixed server space and if it’s not utilized, it’s again a wasted cost.
In fact the public cloud is an ideal environment for disaster recovery planning, since it is pay per use, completely scalable and easier to manage than multiple locations.
AWS provides the flexibility and scalability to setup DR based on the business requirement, to have either a mission critical always on setup with the complete environment provisioned and running, or have a bare minimum setup with critical data infrastructure replicating with options to scale business applications as required. This flexibility allows business, after disaster recovery, to be up and running within a few hours, if not minutes. CSS Corp helps define the right DR strategy for the customers based on their RPO and RTO requirements, and help them implement and manage a right kind of DR, be it a light weight cost effective pilot light, to a fully functional DR catering to mission critical business. CSS Corp support also provides a fully integrated automated platform using AWS API that facilitates the provisioning and configuration of infrastructure resources, with consistency of recovered data, and executes periodic drills to ensure that DR setup meets the RPO and RTO objectives.
CSS Corp has saved time, cost and effort in ensuring data recovery using – AWS, helping achieve higher savings and greater efficiencies for a number of our clients, for their Data recovery processes.
CSS Corp has designed, deployed and manage DR environments on AWS for several customers, ensuring always on operations by meeting their RPO and RTO requirements, and saving their capital and operational expenses through efficient and effective DR implementations.
It is for all these reasons and more, that organizations encourage volunteering by its employees. For example, one of the volunteering program at CSS Corp was focussed on E-Waste. It was great to see employees keen to understand more about it and what they could do to make a difference. A key learning from the program – was most of them were honest enough to agree that till date they had not thought about the dangers of junking their old gadgets, or about recycling the e- waste responsibly. However, by the end of the session, there was complete agreement that they need to start caring about the environment and pollution and hence no more junking old phones without thinking first. All participants have committed to change!
On a recent visit to Shoolagirivillage in Krishnagiri district, I asked some women in a Self Help Group, (SHG) how many of them had cell phones – with pride almost all of them raised their hands waving their cell phones.
Even the beautiful Coffea Arabica bud is ready. It awaits Revathi ,the pre-monsoon shower. Revathi, the giver of life, the nurturer.In the wilderness of the Malnad will Revathi keep her date ? But this year she is late again. Her timely arrival is important. For some its life .For some its business as usual. Her arrival announces that the South West Monsoon is on its way.Her drizzle enhances the coffee bloom .The coffee farmer waits in anticipation. She brings the Malnad back to life.
In the year 2009 both Arabica and Robusta suffered losses due to unseasonal heavy rains. Likewise, heavy rains during the blossoming delayed the harvest and lowered crop quality in 2010. There have been periods of drought In 2002, Karnataka experienced a severe drought for three consecutive years (2001-02, 2002-03 and 2003-04). The IPCC on Climate Change predicts that yields from rain-dependant agriculture could be down by 50% by 2020 . In the Coorg region, some areas have already seen rainfall drop by one-third – from 106 inches per year to 70 inches.
In a world that is obsessed with higher and higher growth, expressways and XUVs, where SUVs are becoming passé, where development is equated only with highways, roads and spiffing airports, where man’s insatiable consumption need has to be met at any cost , where a desire to monetize any and everything , deforestation at the light of speed , where the slow dying of our coral reef does not seem to matter , where unsafe and high pollution levels make our cities unfit for us to breathe in or live in, the dropping dead of bee colonies by the millions, the drying up of our rivers, the destruction of wetlands that give way to sky scrapers, chemical riddled food, where nuclear contamination and radiation uncertainty is accepted, where we are unconcerned about the acidification of our oceans and parts of our seas being declared sea dead,traffic jams on the 8,848-metre high Everest caused by people who came from far away countries to “conquer” the peak ,instead leave behind waste on the pristine white mountain , where dams are not good enough, but mega dams is the answer, where glaciers melt rapidly, where peak summer temperatures are reached more frequently than ever, where we want growth at any cost, a significant change happened to our planet.
