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Disaster Plan

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| Disaster plan | | | | 6/6/2010 |

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Abstract
This is a disaster plan that I created for the IST Department of XYZ Computers company in order to prevent any future problems that may arise such as the situation they had over the weekend when a major water pipe broke and flooded the first floor, causing extensive damage to the servers. Included in the disaster plan I will address a few issues that will aid the company in protecting against such things as any natural disasters that may occur as well as any other occurrences that may deem necessary for such a disaster plan. I will detail my recommendations for using a RAID system for data protection in order to have a well placed back up plan with the most up to date information possible. In short I plan to properly detail a disaster plan the best possible way that I can in order to have a good disaster recovery plan in place rather than having to spend the time and money on extra recovery efforts. Hopefully having such a plan in place will keep from losing important data to unforeseen issues, such as natural disasters due to the geographical location among other issues that may arise at the most in opportune time possible.

When creating a disaster plan the first thing to keep in mind is to do a complete risk assessment of the entire existing computer systems. In order to accomplish this task all the risks and probabilities will need to be noted such as any delays to system uptime and how close at hand these issues may actually be. There may be many things that can be considered a risk such as anything that could possibly cause a system outage, other issues may be something that is not related to the system but instead a common accidental data deletion which can be caused by and employee, possible virus attacks, all the way to the more unconventional threats of nature such as fires and floods. Being able to recognize these threats and figure out which have a higher probability of happening will need to be analyzed and prioritized if possible using the simplest of systems. This system of categorizing these threats should be to use a ranking system like impact and probability and within these categories there should be a risk rating system such as low, medium, or high. Once these risks have been properly assessed and categorized other questions will need to be answered such as what can be done to reduce these issues and the cost to do so. There may be other more common problems such as being able to anticipate any risks before they occur, being able to decrease the chances of it happening, reducing the overall affects on the business itself. That is why having more preventative measures in place the better things will be. Like if a company required that all of its data be backed up regularly on RAID tapes stored at a remote site in case of emergency or having an emergency power supply in the event of a power outage. The IST Department of XYZ Computers being located on the first floor with all the important data that is being kept such as employee information, some of which may be personal and some payroll data included after all this information is completed the data is backed up using tapes as well as not having a firewall in place and the email is located on the same server as payroll if one system is lost most of the data will be lost. In the event on a natural disaster the backup tapes can be and more than likely will be destroyed also. Since this has already occurred in the past the disaster plan must be as strict as possible. This will incorporate a new backup system for the disaster scheme of the organization on a RAID system. Being able to fully understand the RAID system will aid in comprehending the capabilities of how RAID levels can be used. The computer data storing known as Redundant Array of Independent Drives/Disks or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives/Disks, in general RAID is a storage system utilizing various hard drives that can be used to store enhanced data dependability. In this way RAID uses either particular software or hardware to stack physical hard disks into one logical sector. The hardware solutions are put together in a way that they show in the system as one hard drive, the same with software the RAID drive would show as one drive to applications. Reverberating, the replicating of data to more than one disk; marking, the disserving of data over more than one disk; error rectification, error tolerance are the three general conceptions in RAID. Relying on the system requisitions Raid levels make use of these methods. Making use of RAID in order to enhance dependability, significant for safeguarding data that is important to the business are the basic intentions. The more disks being utilized the more probability that something will go wrong with one, but this can be avoided and the failure may be survived by repairing and being more dependable. Another popular reason for RAID systems is that they can be set up in such a way that they keep working even when there is a failure. The RAID system is utilized mostly because of the way that data is stored and the way it’s retrieved, the use of multiple disks and the lowered chances of redundancy and failure. Although it is mostly used on servers RAID can be made use of on workstations as well. In the cases making use of RAID on workstations these would be more storage intensive computers such as those used for audio and video editing. There are six levels of RAID that can be utilized: RAID 0: Block level striping without parity or mirroring. Increased performance is the basic idea here; the data is splint between two hard disks. The speed of the retrieval process is doubled.

RAID 1: The mirroring has added security for the data stored although it saves the same data to two separate disks. This RAID also uses two hard disks that produce a single logical drive.

RAID 2: Instead of striping data at the block level it happens at the bit level, high data transfer rates are available. Utilizing hamming code 7 disks can be used, with error correction included.

RAID 3: Again instead of block level striping this uses byte level striping. This RAID is rarely used.

RAID 4: Again using block level striping, when requested each set is independent of each other. By standards it is like RAID 5 and RAID 3.

RAID 5: Block level striping with low redundancy. RAID 5 also utilized parity data distribution.

RAID 6: Also uses block level striping, only that RAID 6 uses double distributed parity. RAID 6 also has fault tolerance.

All of these storage options are viable resources that can be utilized by the IST unit of XYZ Computers in order to store any all of its backup data. The disaster recovery plan can be enforced in two places, one being within the company itself and in another location anywhere that’s not the physical location of the company in geographical sense.

References * Torres, G. (2004, November 20). Everything you need to know about raid. Retrieved from http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Everything-you-need-to-know-about-RAID/67/1 * Regan, P. (2006). Disaster prevention and recovery. (2006). Local area networks. Prentice-hall. * Raid systems. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.midwestdatarecovery.com/raid-system-introduction.html

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