Tech tip: Volume Shadow Copy Services (Vss) on Window Server 2008 can make a copy of active, open files on the fly. It works on the block level similarly to an open file agent. This works a treat if you need a quick-and-dirty command line backup.

To make a copy of the (C:) volume:

C:\> vssadmin create shadow /for=c:

To view copies of the (C:) volume:

C:\> vssadmin list shadows /for=c:

To mount a shadow copy as a browseable folder:

C:\>mklink /d <folder name> <shadow copy volume from list>

C:\>mklink /d C:\mycopy \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy6

For more information, see:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754968(WS.10).aspx

How My Firm Reduced Costs and Delivers Agile IT Infrastructure through Virtualization

Virtualization has become an important part of many organizations’ IT strategy for 2009 and beyond.

The availability of both data and IT systems are at risk not only from natural disasters but also power outages, human error and hardware failures. To ensure that your company can quickly recover systems and data in the event of such an incident, it needs a reliable and cost-effective disaster recovery plan. The use of virtualization and data protection technology combined helps you control costs as your company grows, which is essential in any economic climate.

My firm has deployed CA ARCserve Backup and Microsoft Hyper-V server 2008 to create a simple and scalable disaster recovery environment. The combined solution is responsible for backing up around 36 terabytes of data every week.

Join this webcast to find out how CA ARCserve Backup, combined with Microsoft Hyper-V 2008, can work in tandem to protect many terabytes of data, and deliver an agile, cost-effective IT infrastructure.

In this webcast, you’ll also hear:

• How to utilize CA ARCserve Backup to restore single files 
• How CA ARCserve can backup your physical environment and also restore virtual instance 
• Microsoft’s Virtualization Strategy 
• The role Microsoft’s Hyper-V plays today and what you can expect in the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 R2 
• How in the event of a disaster, my firm is able to recover 86 physical servers to 12 standby servers in just two hours 
• How my firm has been able to minimize not only downtime but also its spend on disaster recovery utilizing this combined solution 

Eric G. Pitcher
Eric Pitcher is vice president of technology strategy at CA, responsible for setting and communicating CA’s Recovery Management plans across the business unit, throughout CA and to partners and customers. Previously, Eric served as vice president of product management at CA, responsible for defining the process, requirements and product specifications for CA’s Recovery Management product lines. Prior to that, Eric worked as assistant vice president of CA’s research and development global SWAT team—a specialized task force designed to maximize the quality, customer satisfaction, and market competitiveness of CA’s storage management solutions.

Before joining CA, Eric was network and systems administrator at Universal Studios Florida and was responsible for server and network design, installation, administration and support on a network of more than 1,000 users. Eric earned a bachelor of science degree in business administration from the University of Central Florida.

Wolfgang Goerlich
J Wolfgang Goerlich, CISSP, CISA, is an information security professional who focuses on performance and availability. Mr. Goerlich is currently ... the network operations and security manager. With ten years of experience, Mr. Goerlich has a solid understanding of both the IT infrastructure and the business it enables.

Isaac Roybal
Isaac Roybal is a Product Manager in Windows Server managing the Server Virtualization, including Microsoft’s Hyper-V, and has been involved with IT for over twelve years. Seven of those years have been with Microsoft. Isaac’s career started in Systems and Network Engineering working with VMS, Windows Server since NT 3.51 and IIS 4 in various capacities.

As I mentioned before, I have played around a bit with Hyper-V and virtualized my production and recovery systems. CA did a case study on the project.  This coming Monday, April 20 at 12:00 pm Eastern, I am doing a joint webcast with CA and Microsoft. The topic is still virtualization with the focus on disaster recovery. I doubt I will say anything new during the talk, excepting the talk will be much briefer than some others I have given on DR. CA’s going to talk a bit about their CDP, however, which is pretty cool stuff.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/go/seminars/CA/infrastructure_through_virtualization

What role does Disaster Recovery Plan training, testing and auditing play in a successful Business Continuity program?

Testing. Things are only known to be good at the time you check. The time to find out that components of the DR plan are not good is not during an actual disaster. That time has a premium cost. No, the time to identify and correct weaknesses is during test runs. The only cost for that time is the time for those testing.

Training. Those testing the plan have to know what to do. Furthermore, they have to know it to an extent that executing the plan becomes second nature. This is because actual disasters are stressful affairs. It is easy to make mistakes, omit steps, or forget details when under stress. The role of planning and training is to ingrain the steps and make the plan easier to perform if needed.

After looking at several P2V-V2P solutions, we chose CA ARCserve. The choice has several benefits. The primary one is that it allows us to use a single tool for both data protection and for physical/virtual conversions. Essentially, this means a flat learning curve for my team. The other benefit is that CA ARCserve is significantly less expensive that dedicated P2V tools. CA did a case study on how we use their product and it is now online.

http://www.ca.com/us/success/collateral.aspx?cid=201041

"A winter storm continues to ravage the Midwest and Northeast, cutting power, phone and Internet connectivity to millions of homes and businesses. Disaster recovery provider Agility Recovery Solutions is currently recovering 21 businesses and government entities in Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois and Florida with electrical and network services. An additional nine organizations have Agility on standby for potential recoveries in the next 24 hours."
http://www.pitchengine.com/agilityrecoverysolutions/disaster-recovery-company-responds-to-21-disastersresulting-from-winter-storm/3776/

Many of us rely upon vendors and third-parties for our disaster recovery efforts. For example, I personally rely upon a refueling company to keep my generator topped off and a maintenance company to keep it running. Other companies rely upon shared data centers, data backup/recovery companies, and DR plannters like Agility Recovery.

A weakness in these plans occurs when a regional disaster impacts multiple companies. In these scenarios, the third-party may lack the capacity to handle all the requests and be overwhelmed. One thing that happened to my data center during the winter storm (which knocked power out for five days) was that the fuel trucks were delayed for 48 hours, and the maintenance crew delayed for 24. The times are well within tolerances, but well beyond normal service levels.

Extreme IT: Hurricanes, high winds and heavy seas in the Gulf of Mexico
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9116482

Great article. Now that man does DR, hard core. I enjoyed his description of the field. "We're always looking to make ourselves more efficient ... There's just no room for complacency. We have to be able to adapt and adjust."

If there is one constant in IT, it is change.

Many Michigan data centers are on generator power this morning. From the Associated Press, "Wind gusting more than 60 mph knocked out power to about 413,000 Michigan homes and businesses on Sunday as temperatures dipped back into the 20s and 30s." AT&T Wireless was out state wide yesterday. Level 3 Communications, a backbone Internet provider, also had an outage yesterday morning in the Detroit NOC.

How are your disaster recovery strategies faring?

Disaster recovery planning does not come easy for security professionals. It is often overlooked. In fact, some people are surprised when they learn ISC2 or ISACA considers business continuity as the domain of information security. Security staff may not fully engage in DR and, as a result, organizations are at increased security and financial risk. Accordingly, it is worthwhile to consider planning and designing a disaster recovery program.

Read more in this quarter's edition of the Security Journal.

Baseline has an article on Best Practices in Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity Planning. "... disaster recovery priorities depend on the nature of the system. 'We take snapshots ranging from every hour to every 15 minutes, depending on our systems,' says Wolfgang Goerlich, network operations and security manager for the Birmingham, Mich.-based investment banking firm. 'Our top-tier systems, such as trading, can have an issue if we lose even 15 minutes. Lower-tier systems, such as research, just generate reports once a day, so if they lose data for [a few] hours, it isn’t as big of an issue. With our lowest-tier systems, our DR plan is to go out and buy boxes and bring them up in a couple of weeks.'"

"The key thing for us was a very short recovery-time objective,' says Goerlich. The firm uses Compellent’s virtual storage arrays, with the DR baked in. He says it takes just one click to activate DR and boot up the systems on a new box."