Backup and Recovery Technologies for Business Continuity

Chapters V-IX dealt with server operating environment and its role in ensuring business continuity mostly in cases of ongoing data processing operations. Having a server down and making it up as soon as possible in order to minimize the costs of downtime was the topic in these chapters. Chapter X deals with technologies for ensuring higher levels of data availability in cases of data loss by having data recovered ASAP. Several backup and recovery technologies are explored with focus being on the traditional backup.

Server Operating Environment and Business Continuity Drivers

After identifying major downtime points within a client-server architecture in Chapter IV, Chapter V discusses in more details enterprise servers and server operating environments from continuous computing and business continuity perspective. The main features of enterprise servers are identified and a framework for selection of the server operating environment is presented.

Business Continuity for Business Agility

Continuous computing technologies are employed in order to achieve business continuity from the business operations perspective. In the same time, these technologies are the main prerequisite for business agility as agility relies on available information and “always-on” information system that generates it. Business Agility and relations with business continuity technologies are briefly explained in Chapter XIV

Business Computing in the Internet Era

The first chapter aims at defining a “big picture” of contemporary business and business computing. Business pressures and business risks are explored in order to identify the main factors affecting the functioning of modern organizations in the Internet era. IT-related risks are identified as well, showing some sort of paradox in today’s e-business and e-economy era: information technologies are used in order to provide answers to several types of business pressures and reduce the risks, however, in the same time, IT can be a risk by itself, if not implemented and/or managed properly.

Networking Technologies for Business Continuity

Continuous computing technologies explored in previous chapters, in many cases, are located on different locations. However, they depend on each other and are bound to data communication and networking technologies that are used in order to ensure data transfers. Therefore, the data communications technologies are crucial in ensuring continuous computing each time when computing devices and users are located in different locations. Chapter XII provides some explanations on them and their role in business continuity.

System Administration and System Administrator's Role in Business Continuity

Chapter IX focuses on the role of system administration as an IT-profession and system administrator as a person who does the administrative (managerial) activites on servers and server operating systems. If server goes down for any reason or server operating system crashes, in most cases it is up to this person to “recover” the server from the bad situation and make sure that business – critical applications continue to run and provide services to end users. HP-UX as a server operating system platform is selected in order to demonstrate most commonly used techniques and features that may lead to higher levels of system availability.

Economics of Downtime

After introducing some basic facts on how today’s businesses are faced with several types of business risks, the second chapter tends to explain one of the major problems that a contemporary business may face in regard to the impact of its computing infrastructure to business results. System downtime is briefly explained and the resulting “economics of downtime” is elaborated in order to demonstrate the direct financial impacts of the unavailability of so-called “business-critical applications” to business results.

Choosing the Server Operating Platform for Business Continuity

Chapter VIII discusses the server operating systems’ main attributes from the selection perspective. Several selection criteria are explained through a model that contains 22 most important features of server operating systems in regard to business continuity perspective. Some empirical studies and results on the performances of most widely used server operating systems are provided.

Advanced Server Technologies for Business Continuity

Server operating systems described in Chapter VI usually come preinstalled. Additional components can be installed “on-demand” in the form of ServerWare components and modules, as explained in previous chapter. However, there exist more advanced technologies, both hardware and software, aimed at further enhancing the levels of continuous computing and business continuity. These technologies are introduced and briefly explained in this chapter.

Server Operating Systems

Server configurations described in Chapter V are operated by server operating systems. Server-based application software and business-critical applications are installed on these platforms. Taken together, they form what is called “server operating environment,” the hardware-operating system platform responsible for running business applications and keeping “business in business.” Chapter VI explains in more details server operating systems and their role in ensuring continuous computing and hence business continuity.