Disaster Recovery (DR) and Continuity of Operations (COOP) are two of the most critical elements in any organization’s infrastructure, and are often some of the most overlooked and underfunded elements. Each element has a specific role to play, and failing to plan for either could leave an enterprise crippled while mission critical services are brought back online, if that is even possible.
Understanding the difference between DR and COOP
Disaster Recovery preparations should not be confused with COOP. Disaster Recovery plans are meant to provide a series of steps and tasks by which mission critical operations can be resumed in the event of a catastrophe, such as fire or flood, at a primary business location. Continuity of Operations plans provide an enterprise with redundancy in systems infrastructure that allow normal operations to continue in the event of a system failure. This is often associated with high availability systems and server farms with multiple zones. Another way of putting it is that DR protects against the total loss of a building while COOP provides redundancy which ensures always-on functionality.
Given virus outbreaks of pandemic proportion, weather effects such as tornados, hurricanes, or winter snow, or even the threat of terrorists unleashing chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons, each plan and its associated hardware is an insurance policy that disruption to business and loss of profits in the event of some type of outage can be minimized and controlled as best as possible.
At Convergence Technology Consulting, our engineers have a great deal of experience establishing infrastructure and plans that provide both disaster recovery and continuity of operations support to schools, commercial operations, and government organizations at the local, state and federal level. Because of this extensive practical experience, Convergence engineers can find a solution that is right for both your number of users and your budget – a difficult balancing act to be sure.