Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Support
For Businesses of All Sizes:
Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning Consultants
Business Continuity Planning vs. Disaster Recovery Planning
In case of a catastrophic event, whether natural or man-made, a sound business continuity/disaster recovery (DR/BC) strategy can make the difference between a business glitch and a calamity. Progent's DR/BC consultants can help small and mid-size companies design and test a contingency plan that incorporates advanced technologies and proven processes to get back in business quickly after a catastrophic network failure while at the same time working within a restricted IT budget.
The terms "business continuity planning" and "disaster recovery planning" are often used interchangeably, but it is useful to distinguish them. Business continuity planning takes a high-level, holistic view of a business to determine what personnel, physical resources, and operational processes are required to keep an organization running at some minimally acceptable level after a catastrophe and how to restore normal operations efficiently. Business continuity planning takes into account information technology issues, which are vital to any business, but also addresses areas beyond computing. Will you need temporary office space? Substitute vehicles? Alternate vendors? Replacement personnel? Do you have an emergency notification system in place to alert workers and other stakeholders? Are you required to file regulatory reports or contact insurers? Do you need access to emergency funding?
Progent can provide the services of experienced consultants who can help you follow best practices to create and document a high-level business continuity plan that deals with these critical questions and provides a cohesive game plan to follow in case of a disaster.
Disaster recovery planning is more focused on information technology issues and involves the down-to-earth details of how to keep your crucial IT operations running, protect your data, and restore full network functionality as quickly as practical. Progent can provide the services of a certified IT professional who can help you create and implement a disaster recovery plan that utilizes the latest generation of technologies designed to provide a high degree of fault tolerance and recoverability at historically low prices.
What Is Involved in Developing a Disaster Recovery Plan?
It is still relatively rare for small businesses to have a comprehensive business continuity plan in place, but only businesses with an insatiable appetite for risk should go without a disaster recovery plan. Disaster recovery planning should address the IT resources needed to maintain a defined level of operational capability and restore full network functionality as quickly as practical. The plan should anticipate a broad variety of disaster scenarios such as fires, storms, earthquakes, chemical accidents, flooding, pandemics, loss of key personnel, equipment or system failure, human error, and cyber crime.
You should assess the worst-case impact of each of these disaster scenarios on your network infrastructure and business processes and prioritize the areas that are most critical for you to protect in order to limit business disruption to an acceptable level. For each scenario, you should develop a recovery strategy that addresses your local and remote workers, customers, vendors, facilities, hardware and software, communication services, support contracts, and lead-times for replacing equipment and services and restoring data. Your recovery strategies should include specific action plans, escalation procedures, and data retention and restoration policies. You should also test the plan and train your employees responsible for carrying it out.
Progent's Process for Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan
Progent has developed an effective and affordable process for helping small business create a viable disaster recovery plan. This process involves seven distinct phases:
Phase 1: Business Impact and Risk Analysis
In this phase, you differentiate between critical and non-critical organization functions. A function is critical if its loss for any significant period of time would result in damage that stakeholders regard as unacceptable. You can't realistically decide that all network functions are critical because you have to consider the probable cost of establishing and maintaining rapid business or technical recovery solutions. You also have to take into account that some functions may be dictated by law or contractual obligations. Progent can help you make informed prioritization decisions by assessing the cost and timing issues associated with various recovery strategies.
Once you have identified critical organization functions, you have to establish two values for each function:
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO) - the acceptable latency of data that will be recovered
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO) - the acceptable amount of time to restore the function
The Impact and Risk Analysis phase results in the recovery requirements for each critical function. The recovery requirements consist of:
- The business requirements for recovery of the critical function
- The technical requirements for recovery of the critical function
After you complete the Business Impact and Risk Analysis phase, the business and technical plan requirements have to be documented before you can move on to the solution design and implementation phases. Progent is experienced in generating this vital documentation quickly and can work with your asset management team, if you have one, to identify available and re-allocateable resources you can use for disaster recovery.
Phase 3: Solution Design
The goal of the Solution Design phase is to identify the most cost-effective disaster recovery solution that meets the requirements identified in the Business Impact and Risk Analysis stage. For your critical IT applications, this means determining how the minimum application and application data requirements can be restored within the target timeframe. Disaster recovery plans may also have to address areas beyond IT applications. A common example is the requirement to preserve information in hard copy format. Progent's expertise with Microsoft and Cisco technology, business application programming and support skills, experience providing Internet data center consulting and network management services, and extensive background helping small business recover from catastrophic network failures ensure that the solutions Progent proposes take full advantage of advanced technology to keep costs down while maximizing the chances of success.
Key areas defined in the Solution Design phase include:
- The crisis management command structure
- The location of a secondary work site (where necessary)
- Telecommunication architecture between primary and secondary work sites
- Data replication methodology between primary and secondary work sites
- The application, hardware, and software required at the secondary work site
- The type of physical data requirements at the secondary work site.
The Implementation phase is the most important part of a disaster recovery plan and features the execution of the design elements identified in the Solution Design phase. Work package testing may take place during the implementation of the solution. Progent's skills as system integrators come into play in this phase and help minimize the time and cost required to roll out a viable solution.
Phase 5: Testing and Verification of Technical Solutions
Testing and adjusting recovery plans for specific anticipated scenarios is another critical element of a viable disaster recovery program. The complexity of fault-tolerant networks requires rigorous testing to verify that a recovery plan is feasible and that assigned responsibilities are understood. Recovery exercises will show whether backed-up data can be usefully restored, alternative connectivity technology provides adequate performance under realistic loads, fault-tolerant technologies perform failover processes as planned, and IT staff knows what is expected. Testing exercises will help you identify weak points in your recovery plan so you can make adjustments before disaster strikes. Progent's experience with system design and support ensure that the Testing and Verification phase of a disaster recover plan is thorough and meaningful without being unnecessarily protracted and costly.
Primary areas involved in the Testing and Verification phase of a business continuity plan include:
- Application security
- Hardware operability check
- Application operability/availability check
- Data verification
- Are all work processes for critical functions documented?
- Have the systems used in the execution of critical functions changed?
- Are the documented work checklists meaningful and accurate for staff?
- Do the documented work process recovery tasks and supporting disaster recovery infrastructure allow staff to recover within the predetermined recovery time objective?
In this phase you resolve any issues or concerns that arose during the Testing and Verification phase. Any changes in the solution design that come about during this phase should be reflected in the associated disaster recovery documents. Progent's experience with disaster recovery solution design and implementation help keep test failures at a minimum and speed up remediation, saving clients time and money.
Phase 7: Handover
The handover of a turnkey disaster recovery solution includes three activities:
- The first activity in the Handover phase is to confirm the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in the written manual and the distribution of the documentation to the client's staff. Staff members whose roles are identified as critical for disaster response and recovery are provided training to ensure that they understand what they are expected to do and know how to do it.
- The second activity is testing and verification of technical solutions established for recovery operations.
- The third activity is an all-hands testing and verification of documented organization recovery procedures.
Progent's certified consulting experts can assist your company to build an efficient, non-stop IT architecture that resolves major problems covering a broad array of networking technologies and operations such as:
CRISC-Premier Network Risk Mitigation
The CRISC certification program was established by ISACA in 2010 to validate a consultant's skills to design, implement, and support information system controls to mitigate network risk. Progent offers the expertise of a CRISC-certified engineer to help you to create and carry out a workplace continuity strategy that follows leading practices identified by CRISC and geared to align with your organization's risk appetite, business goals, and budgetary guidelines. To learn more, see CRISC-Certified network risk management experts.
Microsoft Server 2019 Fault-tolerant Failover Clustering
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 incorporated important improvements in scale, performance, manageability, cybersecurity, application compatibility, Linux support, container networking, and hybrid integration of local and cloud-hosted resources. Headline enhancements of Windows Server 2019 are Windows Admin Center for unifying the management of hybrid on-premises/cloud-hosted deployments, System Insights for taking advantage of advance predictive intelligence to control local networks, Windows Defender ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) Exploit Guard for host-intrusion defense, container orchestration using Kubernetes, Cluster Sets for deploying and administering massive non-stop scale-out clusters, and Microsoft's Storage Migration Service for streamlining the upgrade process from outdated releases of Windows Server. For more information, go to Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Fault-tolerant Failover Clustering Support.
Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Disaster Recovery
Progent's Windows Server 2016 disaster recovery/business continuity experts can assist you to design a disaster recovery solution based on Microsoft's most advanced Failover Clustering tools such as Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade for non-intrusive migration to Windows Server 2016, Storage Replica for zero-data-loss recovery, Storage Spaces Direct for enterprise-class network-attached storage using low-cost hardware, Virtual Machine Load Balancing for enhancing the performance and resilience of Failover Clusters while reducing capital investment and management overhead, and Cloud Witness for fast, economical deployment of a failover cluster quorum witness. For more information, see Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Disaster Recovery Support.
VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Disaster Recovery Solutions
VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is a component of VMware vCenter that allows you to specify, automate and test a repeatable runbook for recovering applications and services rapidly following a breakdown. SRM supports centrally controlled and automated disaster recovery, application mobility, and non-intrusive site migration, failback and re-protect. Site Recovery Manager also supports non-disruptive testing for disaster recovery, updates and patches and can produce audit reports to verify full service recovery, validate Service Level Agreements and demonstrate DR compliance. Progent offers the skills of a VCDX certified VMware Site Recovery Manager consultant to assist you to plan, configure, test and manage a DR solution based on VMware SRM.
NetApp MetroCluster Disaster Recovery Software
NetApp MetroCluster is a disaster recovery software suite that uses array-based storage clustering along with continual replication to deliver rapid, zero RPO disaster recovery between datacenters located as far as 185 miles away from one another. Progent offers the skills of a certified NetApp MetroCluster expert who can assist your business to plan, deploy, administer, upgrade, test and troubleshoot a disaster recovery solution based on NetApp MetroCluster. Progent can help you to choose an architecture for your MetroCluster deployment that meets your functional requirements and budget. Progent can make sure you follow leading practices for configuring your MetroCluster solution by delivering guidance with procedures such as assigning disk pools, arranging plexes layout, setting up FlexVol volumes, setting up NetApp Snapshot, provisioning Cisco and Brocade switches, implementing a tiebreaker, designing a configuration replication network, and testing your DR solution to prove compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements.
Fault Tolerant Load Balancing
Progent provides high availability load balancing support that addresses system load balancing, load balanced programs, LAN/WAN infrastructure routing, and content delivery technology including Cisco Content Engine. Fault tolerant load balancing products for which Progent can provide consulting services include Microsoft Windows 2003 and 2008 Server Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Metaframe and Access Gateway, Cisco CSS, Cisco Content Distribution Manager and Cisco CDN Software, and F5 Networks BIG-IP. To read more, see Non-stop Load Balancing.
Fault Tolerant Colocation
Progent's Data Center engineers can show you how to find fault-tolerant data centers that meet the specific needs of your company. High availability off-site data centers are particularly attractive to small and mid-size companies due to of their low cost and simplified logistics in comparison to pursuing a do-it-yourself strategy. Trying to design an in-house data center with even a minimum level of fault tolerance is financially prohibitive for most small companies. Progent is ready to show you how to reap all the advantages of 24x7 colocation centers by offering a full array of consulting and support services. For details, visit High-Availability Internet Data Centers Consulting.
Fault Tolerant Branch Office Networking
Progent's multi-site network infrastructure consultants can help companies create zero-downtime branch office connectivity solutions through fully redundant system architectures with transparent failover. Progent's Cisco-premier CCIE engineers can design and deploy fault-tolerant Inter-office connections supported by zero-downtime EIGRP routers or non-stop OSPF deployment of Cisco routers. Progent can show you how redundant connectivity and transparent fail-over offers economical 24x7 interoffice networking. For details, see High-Availability Interoffice Connectivity.
High Availability Internet Connectivity
Progent's Cisco-authorized network experts can show you how to build an economical, fault tolerant Internet configuration architecture that can deliver 24x7 Internet connectivity through a broad array of fault tolerant Internet access technologies including fault tolerant BGP, transparent fail-over, and multiple Internet Service Providers. Progent offers Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert consultants to show you how to utilize the latest technology for 24x7 Internet connectivity to implement a cost-effective, completely redundant Internet interface with automatic failover and other capabilities to deliver zero-downtime Internet availability. To find out more, visit Non-stop Internet Connectivity Solutions.
Backup and Restore Solutions Consultants
Progent can provide economical remote support from engineers with expertise in a broad array of utilities and technologies that deliver solutions for backing up Windows, Mac, and Linux/UNIX servers and workstations plus notebooks and handhelds. Progent can provide consulting support for leading data protection products such as Acronis, Backup Exec, BackupAssist, CrashPlan, Double-Take, MozyPro, Retrospect, Time Machine, VMware Data Recovery (VDR), and Oracle Solaris FLARs. Progent's consultants can assist your company to design, enhance, or troubleshoot data backup solutions for a variety of architectures such as on-premises, remote, cloud-based, or a mix. To learn more, go to Backup and Restore Solutions Expertise.
System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) Backup and Recovery Consulting
Progent's certified System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) consultants can assist your company to create an effective workplace recovery plan, design an affordable fault-tolerante network infrastructure, deploy a SCDPM-powered backup and recovery solution, thoroughly validate your system, train your administrative personnel or regular consultants how to maintain SCDPM, or provide extensive information technology support outsourcing such as remote housing of System Center Data Protection Manager machines in Progent's world-class data center facility. To read more, go to System Center Data Protection Manager Consulting.
Barracuda Backup Local, Offsite and Cloud Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
Barracuda Backup is a low-cost, subscription backup/restore platform for small and medium-size businesses. A Barracuda Backup solution can include a custom-designed hardware appliance manufactured by Barracuda or a software-based appliance with similar functionality but which uses your existing storage infrastructure. Barracuda Backup protects critical business data produced locally, at one or more remote locations, or in the cloud. For disaster recovery, you can replicate data to the Barracuda Cloud, to Amazon Web Services (AWS), or to any site with a physical or virtual Barracuda Backup appliance. Progent is a certified Barracuda partner and Progent's Barracuda Backup consulting experts can provide a wide range of consulting support services to assist you to design, configure, manage and repair a backup and disaster recovery system based on Barracuda technology. For more information, visit Barracuda Backup and disaster recovery consulting and management.
ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup Solutions for Backup and Disaster Recovery
Hornetsecurity's Altaro VM Backup software offers small businesses a reliable and budget-friendly platform for backing up and recovering Hyper-V and VMware-powered virtual machines (VMs). Altaro VM Backup can be deployed in local, remote, distributed, and cloud environments and also enables cost-effective cloud backup to Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage. Progent is a certified Altaro partner and offers a broad range of online or on-premises consulting services to help you to plan, deploy, optimize and troubleshoot a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solution based on Altaro VM Backup. With ProSight Data Protection Services Altaro VM Backup, Progent offers a fully managed backup/restore service based on Altaro VM Backup. To find out more, visit Altaro VM Backup certified consultants.
ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup Services for Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 provides rudimentary archiving but does not include integrated support for key data protection capabilities such as Exchange backups or long-term point-in-time data recovery for OneDrive or SharePoint. Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup (formerly branded Altaro O365 Backup) provides a full-featured platform for automatic backup and quick restoration of all your company's M365 mailboxes, Teams Chats, SharePoint sites, OneDrive for Business data, and content on Windows desktops and laptops. Progent is a certified Hornetsecurity/Altaro partner and has designed ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup to provide end-to-end management services for Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup suite. ProSight DPS 365 Total Backup delivers an affordable backup-as-a-service solution that guards M365 components against data loss resulting from human or software error, malicious deletion, and cyber attacks such as ransomware. For more information, visit ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup services for Microsoft 365.
Managed Cloud Backup: ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO
ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO from Progent provide small and medium-sized businesses a low cost end-to-end service for reliable backup/disaster recovery. Available at a low monthly cost, ProSight DPS ECHO automates and monitors your backup activities and enable fast recovery of vital data, applications and virtual machines that have become unavailable or damaged due to hardware breakdowns, software glitches, natural disasters, human mistakes, or malware attacks such as ransomware. ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO can help you protect, recover and restore files, folders, applications, system images, plus Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware virtual machine images. Critical data can be protected on the cloud, to a local storage device, or mirrored to both. Progent's backup and recovery specialists can provide advanced expertise to set up ProSight DPS ECHO to be compliant with regulatory standards such as HIPAA, FIRPA, and PCI and, whenever needed, can help you to recover your business-critical data. Read more about ProSight DPS ECHO managed cloud backup.
ProSight Data Protection Services 360 Backup Services
Progent can help you to create, deploy and debug a backup plan based on MSP360 technology. MSP360 enables file/folder or image-based backup/restore for virtual machines and physical computers, works with all leading public clouds, and permits you to create a backup solution with a low Recovery Time Objective and a granular RPO. With ProSight DPS 360 Backup, Progent can provide comprehensive monitoring and remote management of your backup environment to protect against data loss caused by user mistakes, computer errors, malicious insiders, and external assaults such as ransomware. For details, visit ProSight Data Protection Services 360 Backup services.
Consulting Services Double-Take Solutions for Data Backup and Recovery
Double-Take Software publishes a family of products designed to deliver small and midsize businesses a variety of cost-effective alternatives for replicating and recovering vital applications including Microsoft Exchange, SQL, RIM Blackberry, and SharePoint. Progent's disaster recovery planning consultants have in-depth backgrounds incorporating Double-Take technology into small business information networks to achieve an advanced state of fault tolerance and business continuity capability at a budget-friendly cost. To find out more, visit Consulting for Double-Take Solutions for Data Backup.
Why Choose Progent for Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning Solutions?
Since Progent is a Microsoft Partner and offers professional application consulting for a wide range of small business software programs, Progent is able to help customers to arrive at efficient information technology solutions that substantially enhance the productivity of your IT network. As a Registered Partner with Cisco, Progent offers the expertise of certified engineers and specialists with experience in designing, deploying and maintaining networking environments based on Cisco technology. The broad scope of Progent's IT know-how and Progent's familiarity with the requirements of small and midsize businesses make Progent the ideal resource for creating and maintaining a cost-effective, high-availability information system.
How to Access Progent's Consultants for Business Continuity Solutions Support
In order to ask Progent about engineering help for business continuity solutions, call
An index of content::
Live Communications Server Help and Support
Microsoft LCS Server IM Integration
MS Office Communications Server provides Instant Messaging and presence in an extensible, enterprise-grade solution featuring advanced protection, seamless compatibility with other Microsoft software, an expandable, standards-based development platform, and support for regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, and GLB. Your enterprise can realize lower costs and improved business efficiencies, enhanced worker productivity, and stronger intellectual property security with this simple-to-administer, fault-tolerant IM platform. Effective deployments of Microsoft Office Communications Server call for careful planning and thought before installation. Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can provide the skill needed to deliver all the benefits of Microsoft Office Communications Server across your entire organization.
Branch Location Professional
Support and Setup Sales Office
Years of background providing Microsoft support and Cisco network consulting has allowed Progent to develop a unique capability for serving branch offices that need IT help with the flexibility associated with with small firms but which offers professional client interaction, thorough documentation, and adherence to corporate IT protocols. If your enterprise has a remote office located anywhere in or any region covered by Progent's consultants, Progent can offer a wide range of onsite and off-site IT support services and network architecture assistance.
Technical Consultant Nagios
24x7x365 Nagios Support Services
Nagios and MRTG are powerful, license-free monitoring tools that operate under the Linux OS and can be used to analyze UNIX/Linux networks, Microsoft Windows systems, or multi-platform situations where the Linux OS and MS Windows coexist. Nagios allows network support engineers to monitor network services including SMTP, HTTP, FTP, and PING. Multi Router Traffic Grapher permits you to graph the bandwidth in and out of SNMP network devices such as processors, routers, and switches. Progent's network integration experts can show you how to use both these programs to streamline and troubleshoot your system.
Citrix XenApp Application Delivery Technology Professional
Citrix Presentation Server Consultants
Progent's Citrix-certified consultants can assist you to plan, implement, administer, and support a virtualized application delivery solution based on Citrix XenApp. Progent's Cisco CCIE network consultants can show you how to enhance your network infrastructure for distributing server-side and client-side applications, and Progent's datacenter management and support consultants can assist your organization to administer and maintain a remote datacenter that offers high uptime, enhanced security, and rapid recovery.
Microsoft Desktop Services
Microsoft and Mac Desktop Network Recovery
Progent can deliver a broad range of cost-effective consulting and support services to assist your company to deploy, configure, repair, and administer workstations and notebooks based on Windows, macOS and OS X, or popular editions of Linux. Progent can offer onsite or online assistance for single machines or laptops or help you to plan and carry out a company-wide migration to new or updated operating system software and business applications. Progent can also provide consultants and technicians to help your company to plan for and implement an office relocation or consolidation organized to cause the least possible disruption of your productivity.
Best Technology Consulting Services SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn Availability Groups
SQL Server 2014 Backup Encryption Troubleshooting
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 includes significant improvements in key areas such as speed, availability, compliance, and cloud readiness. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the first release of SQL Server that incorporates in-memory capability that operates seamlessly across all types of applications including OLTP, data warehousing (DWH), and business analytics (BI). Progent's Microsoft-certified SQL Server 2014 consulting team can provide efficient remote and onsite consulting services including system design, configuration, management, remediation, and software development services to enable businesses of all sizes to realize fast return from their SQL Server 2014 investment.
64-bit Upgrade Network Consultants
64-bit Upgrade Remote Support
Progent's Microsoft-certified engineers can help you plan, document, carry out, administer, and repair a network-wide migration to 64-bit server and client operating systems and business applications. Progent can help you test your 64-bit infrastructure to verify that it handles all of the important 32-bit applications that you want to keep as well as the latest 64-bit versions of software you wish to install.
MS SQL 2008 IT Consultant
MS SQL 2008 Configuration
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 offers indispensable, standardized tools to IT experts and network users, reducing the difficulty of designing, deploying, administering, and accessing enterprise information and analytical programs on platforms ranging from mobile devices to enterprise information systems. The complexity and integration requirements of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 call for an IT consultant with real-world experience and broad knowledge in planning and building data-driven, end-to-end business technology solutions. The knowledge and experience of Progent's Microsoft-certified technical team, with an average of more than 10 years of professional work involving Microsoft technology, assures you success in designing, deploying and managing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 solutions that are seamlessly integrated with the Microsoft .NET platform.
SCVMM 2012 and SharePoint Configuration
System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Support and Integration
Progent can help businesses of all sizes to follow leading practices to configure SCVMM 2012 hosts and host groups, networking, storage systems, and library resources; plan, integrate, and administer private clouds, VMs, and VMM services in SCVMM 2012; and combine SCVMM 2012 with System Center 2012 Operations Manager for comprehensive monitoring and reporting. Progent can help your business to upgrade from a legacy release of SCVMM or from a third-party virtualization management platform, and Progent can show you how you to optimize and repair your existing SCVMM 2012 environment so you realize the highest possible business value.
Remote Employees Cloud Integration Remote Support
Offsite Workforce Cloud Integration Help and Support
Progent can assist small and medium-size businesses to provision their remote workers with seamless integration with cloud services.
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