Depending on a data center makes your company vulnerable

If your company has a data center, it means that it is critical for your business. Yes, small-scale mishaps all companies encounter from time to time would happen, but if you have prepatred properly, such mishaps should not result in any real disruption to the business. Fault-tolerant, high-availability servers, redundant storage, duplicated communications lines into the data center, and backup power systems can ensure continuity of service. Similarly, accidental data loss owing to human error can also be planned for, and the data restored in minutes once the problem becomes known. Malicious actions by disgruntled employees are harder to deal with quickly, especially if these employees have extensive administrative rights, but it is possible to contain the damage.

Occasionally, however, a rare but truly disruptive event — a disaster — will come along. A good definition of a disaster is an event that can be predicted, but not prevented — especially not at the level of the individual company — at least as far as an individual organisation is concerned. Timothy Coats, business continuity practice lead for Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based EMC Infrastructure Consulting, says that once you have predicted that a disaster can happen, you need to get some sort of idea how likely it is that it will occur. Losing an entire data center — functionally, if not physically — is a rare event, but earthquakes, hurricanes, or acts of terrorism do occur. “Generally, the loss of an entire data centre is a rare event. In many instances, a data centre will cease functioning. That’s a more common occurrence.”

What to do? See Jonthan Bennett’s useful ZDNet discussion.