24
“The cloud computing model is being hailed as the future of IT, but despite the
attractiveness of on-demand computing which is a great option for many businesses,
IC there are also a few problems that need to be addressed before businesses can consider
cloud as an effective option for anything other than cheap archiving and server power,
T
OP
warns Dominic Monkhouse, MD UK, PEER 1.
T
HO
When storing data in the cloud, place for integrity and compatibility trading online
security, availability and with its own hardware and needs to make sure its system is as
redundancy are major workflow requirements. secure as possible.
considerations to managing
business risk. Some cloud A security issue to consider is that When any company decides to
providers offer back-up as part of meeting PCI DSS (Payment Card move data into the cloud, it first
the deal, but the frequency of this Industry Data Security Standards) is needs to decide what data is
may not be sufficient for some not a cloud forte. The cloud is appropriate. While the cloud has its
businesses, and may never be an not secure enough to host or benefits, sensitive information that
option for primary data. process credit card or transactional needs to be backed up constantly
data. is not well suited. Customers won’t
Restoring data must also be care that a businesses can access
considered which means the type It is therefore not a viable option cloud applications from anywhere if
of backup the cloud provider offers for a business looking to move into their data has been lost due to
is critical. Tape is unlikely, but users e-commerce and meet the online back-up issues or accessed in a
should check what backup is in payment standards. Any business security breach.”
Tim Dunger at Plan B DR talks about the benefits of a fully managed,
virtualisation-based, IT disaster recovery and backup service.
a crisis, but it’s a much easier company’s network, which takes
prospect both to achieve and to server snapshots on a nightly basis,
practice. ships the data to off-site systems,
Virtualisation’s where they build and continually
promise comes from its ability to Virtualisation can deliver significant update virtual copies of the primary
provide a consistent computing advantages for disaster recovery systems. Everything that would need
environment regardless of the because it can dramatically reduce changing to make the systems run in
underlying hardware. This means the hardware costs for the recovery the offsite facility is updated every
that a system image can be made to platform. As a result companies can time the data is updated. This
work on any hardware, and because now purchase products that would means that they’re ready to go
of the consolidation advantages of allow them to make a virtual warm immediately. This should be backed
virtualisation, multiple workloads can standby solution from a physical live by automated 100% testing, and this
be run on single physical machines. server. is where virtualisation really helps
So, if a company’s live systems run again. By its nature it makes testing
on a virtual platform already, it is DR companies are starting to see the a complete machine image relatively
much easier to take their virtualised benefits of a virtualised recovery simple, and therefore it can be easily
system images and run them platform and deliver a managed automated, giving users complete
elsewhere on other virtual machines. service around it. For example, an confidence that systems will work in
They still have to make this work in appliance would go onto a a crisis.”
SEPT 09 WWW.SNS-UK.CO.UK
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