Disaster Survival Guide for Business Communications Networks
A handy reference to ensuring protection of your organization's telephone, Internet, network and storage systems.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Disaster Survival Guide for Business Communications Networks
Chapter 4: Data Management and Storage Technology
The quandary of data management is that business (or just about any organization for that matter) needs instant and constant access to data, yet there must be zero downtime and the files must be protected at all costs, which usually involves the seemingly conflicting activities of real-time backup and replication of data at various locations.
The good news is that, with the rise in popularity of data warehousing and mania over data mining, data is more important that ever. There is a plethora of storage options: ASPs, managed systems, hardware and software tools with high performance, fault tolerant storage systems architectures; and backup systems and services. SAN/NAS (Storage Area Network/Network-attached storage) solutions, and disaster-recovery procedures are the flavor of the moment.
EVERYTHING IS DATA, EVEN MONEY
Communications networks are a conduit for data. Data from e-commerce sites, distant data warehouses, customer orders, financial transactions, call centers an awesome real-time mass of information. Data may travel at the speed of light over networks, but it's not ephermeral. Data is sent from somewhere to a destination, and at some terminal endpoint it must be stored, analyzed and acted upon. Not only transactions but voice conversations recorded between customers and call center agents can be digitized, transmitted as data and stored for later analysis. Data has become more mission-critical. People work with computers all the time, so everything from bank account transactions and hospital patient records to personal income tax documentation and product engineering designs are "data" that is stored somewhere. Indeed, there are...
Copyright Richard Grigonis 2002 under license agreement with Books24x7
