Are you ready for the worst case scenario?

According to the US Bureau of Labor, 93 percent of businesses that experience a significant data loss are out of business within five years.

Many of our clients operate 24 hours a day, multiple shifts, weekends, or across multiple time zones. They cannot afford to be down and they cannot afford to lose data.

Disaster Recovery (DR) is expensive, but NOT having a plan is even more so.

Some clients only need access to their data and have a way to get back operational in a few days or even a few weeks and we set them up for that. But what do you do if your critical systems cannot be down for an hour or even less?

For the client that can't be down, we've come up with a solution we call DC-IN-A-BOX (or more simply, the BOX). Data-Center-in-a-box gives our clients a cost-effective way failover when they need it and get fully operational in minutes.

The BOX gives our clients the flexibility they need to replace their data center or cloud functionality as needed. If they lose their building or data center, they can run off the BOX in our data center. If they need to move it out of our data center, it is on wheels: just shut it down, roll it out, and hook it up to ANY internet connection. If their core apps are in the cloud and the provider loses connectivity or shuts down access for any reason, our client can simply flip over to a properly configured BOX.

Creating the DC-IN-A-BOX system takes a modest commitment in money and time. Probably a lot less than you think.

Here's how it works. We will:
1. Create a Disaster Recovery Playbook which describes DR expectations, key players, contact information, allowed system downtimes, failover and failback processes, and all of the information needed to respond when disaster strikes. This is the hardest part: getting everyone to agree on expectations.
2. Determine which critical applications and data needs to be sync'd to the BOX. This usually includes databases, ERP systems, and file systems.
3. Determine if there are licensing and/or backup restrictions and address them.
4. Build the BOX using similar hardware and software as the original data center. Most of our clients' DCs can be emulated with a single host large enough to run critical virtual machines (VMs). Sizing is based on supporting data synchronization and volumes as well as failover load and users expected to be supported.
5. Set up monitoring and alerting to insure the BOX stays operational and current.
6. Seed the BOX with data and VMs.
7. Start syncing data from the data center or cloud to the BOX.
8. Test failover and failback.
9. Leave it running and turn out the lights.

If disaster strikes, we follow the Playbook and determine next steps.

The system is so flexible that we can respond to regional disasters and cloud system failures. For instance, if your BOX is in our data center, which has a generator, redundant environmental controls, multiple internet connections, and redundant networking, and our data center shuts down, your BOX is on wheels and can be loaded up and moved to any location with power and connectivity. Your BOX will be back in action within minutes of arriving at the new location.

With this value priced solution, everything that needs to be protected is protected and we can configure it so that no more than 15 minutes of data loss is possible and there is no more than 1 hour of downtime. All critical operations can continue.

The BOX is configured based on the operational needs of each client and typically costs less than $5,000 for hardware and can be hosted in our data center for a nominal monthly fee. Disaster Recovery Playbook and system configuration are additional costs and based on the needs of the client.

With DC-IN-A-BOX, we have the peace of mind knowing that our data and operations are protected with a secure, tested system provided by a company we trust.