Cloud Disaster Recovery FAQs
General
How does RapidRecovery compare to other DR
options?
RapidRecovery provides full flexibility, huge cost savings and
faster restore times than older and less flexible recovery methods.
We have developed a detailed & accurate Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO) analysis to compare the traditional DR methods with
RapidRecovery
Once connected to the Quantix Cloud, can I take
advantage of other services?
As our infrastructure spans multiple data centres, once a customer
has a connection to the service they can take advantage by building
a private cloud and commission resources such as virtual servers,
applications and storage on-demand.
Can Quantix arrange the connectivity to the
service?
As a Cloud Services provider we can offer a range of options from a
100MB Ethernet Circuit to a VPN.
When my servers failover how long can they run on
the RapidRecovery platform for?
As part of the service offering, a period of 21 days is permitted
for live operation of the recovery servers. During this period it
is the responsibility of the customer to provision a replacement
server. This period can be extended for an additional cost if
required.
Can you offer automatic failover to your
platform?
The core services offering requests manually invocation to bring
the DR server online. This is not a restriction in the technology,
but just a measure we have introduced to minimise unwanted
failovers. In the real world, we appreciate customers sometimes
forget to inform us that a server is being rebooted so this has
been put in as a safety guard. If customers understand the risks
and do want automatic failover, then the configuration can reflect
this.
What happens when I hit my storage
limit?
If additional storage is required; this can be purchased per GB to
support your requirement.
Can we test the service once live and if so how
often?
As part of the service offering bi-annual testing will be scheduled
with the customer. Additional tests can be arranged and when
required
Do I have to install anything on my
servers?
During the setup process a lightweight agent installation is
required on all servers to be protected by RapidRecovery.
What technology does Quantix use to undertake the
replication?
Quantix use a mixture of the best of breed products based around
varying technologies such as virtualisation, block level server
replication, snapshot functionality and application acceleration.
This is all possible using service provider designed from vendors
such as VMware, Netapp DoubleTake and Juniper.
How current will the data be on the replicated
servers?
The RapidRecovery platform will contain all data that had been
committed to the customer's live server at time of failure. This
data is committed to the target server in exactly the same sequence
to that of the live server, so if there is any latency then no
errors will occur.
In the event of a failure, how long will it take
until we have full access to the DR Servers?
From the point of invocation, it will take under 1 hour to bring
the virtual recovery server(s) on-line which then acts as your
primary server.
Technical
Which operating systems does RapidRecovery
support?
As a core offering RapidRecovery supports:
Windows Server 2008, 2003 or 2003 R2 enterprise, Standard, Web,
Small Business Server, Enterprise x64, or standard x64 Windows 2000
Advanced Server, Server, or Small Business Server with Service pack
4 and the Update Rollup package. The package can also be extended
to support Linux.
Which applications does RapidRecovery
support?
RapidRecovery works at the block level for replication and as such
us application independent. Typical applications include: Oracle
E-Business Suite, Sage, SQL DB, IFS, SAP, Microsoft Exchange
What happens to servers that are internet present
and have a public IP address assigned to them?
As public IP addresses assigned to you via an ISP cannot be
transferred, there are two main ways to overcome such a scenario.
The first being, most ISP's offer a DNS monitoring service whereby
if the primary DNS IP record was to become unavailable it would
failover to an alternative IP address, in this instance being at
the RapidRecovery datacentre. The second method is to create
multiple DNS SRV records with preference weightings. In the event
of a failover any subsequent DNS lookups would fallback to
secondary DNS record again located at the RapidRecovery
datacentre.
Is there any restriction or additional concerns
regarding server management?
Nothing major, IP addresses & naming charges will require
notification to Quantix
Will the service handle an operating system patches, disk
addition/removal?
The service will provide a full server mirror; OS patches won't
cause any issues but we request that we are notified of any disk
additions/removals as in some cases the mirroring will need
adjustment.
Can I connect multiple offices to the
datacentre?
Yes. This can be achieved by the installation of an additional
private data link at each remote office or by the use of VPN
technology.
Does this service replicate errors of potential
problems on my live servers?
If you do have any errors or software corruption on your live
servers, then these will be replicated to the RapidRecovery
platform. If these errors contribute to a server failure, then the
RapidRecovery platform incorporates snapshot technology that can be
used to roll back to a point prior to the inconsistency.