Workplace Recovery Support
For Businesses of All Sizes:
Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning Solutions
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
- A backup plan that features immutability, air gapping, and offsite backup
- 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?
- Does the recovery documentation include the proper order in which network components should be restored?
- 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 Microsoft and Cisco engineers can help your business to create a sensible, zero-downtime environment that resolves critical issues encompassing a wide range of networking solutions and processes such as:
CRISC-Premier Network Risk Mitigation
The Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) program was initiated by ISACA in 2010 to validate an IT professional's ability to design, implement, and support IS control mechanisms to mitigate network risk. Progent can provide the services of a CRISC-certified engineer to assist you to develop and execute a business continuity or disaster recovery strategy that follows leading practices promoted by CRISC and crafted to match your organization's risk appetite, business goals, and IT budget. For more information, visit CRISC-Certified IT risk mitigation experts.
Microsoft Server 2019 High Availability Failover Clustering
Windows Server 2019 incorporated significant improvements in capacity, performance, manageability, cybersecurity, application compatibility, Linux co-existence, container technology, and hybrid combinations of on-premises and cloud-hosted assets. Headline new features of Microsoft Windows Server 2019 are Windows Admin Center for centralizing the management and monitoring of hybrid local/cloud-hosted deployments, System Insights for utilizing modern predictive analytics to control on-premises networks, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Exploit Guard for host-intrusion defense, container networking with Kubernetes, Cluster Sets technology for creating and administering large non-stop scale-out clusters, and Microsoft's Storage Migration Service for streamlining the upgrade process from legacy releases of Windows Server. For more information, see Microsoft Server 2019 Fault-tolerant Failover Clustering Support.
Microsoft Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Progent's Windows Server 2016 disaster recovery consultants can assist you to design a DR system based on Microsoft's latest Failover Clustering technologies including Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade for non-intrusive migration to Windows Server 2016, Storage Replica for zero-data-loss recovery, Storage Spaces Direct for high-performance network-attached storage using industry-standard equipment, VM Load Balancing for enhancing the performance and resilience of Failover Clusters while minimizing TCO and management overhead, and Cloud Witness for fast, affordable creation of a stretch cluster quorum witness. To learn more, go to Microsoft Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Support.
VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Disaster Recovery Solutions
VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is an extension to VMware vCenter that allows you to orchestrate, automate and test a repeatable runbook for recovering services quickly following an outage. SRM supports centrally controlled and automated recovery, application mobility, and non-intrusive site relocation, failback and site re-protect. Site Recovery Manager also supports transparent testing for site recovery, updates and patches and can generate audit reports to verify complete service restoration, validate Service Level Agreements and demonstrate disaster recovery compliance. Progent can provide the skills of a VCDX certified VMware Site Recovery Manager consultant to help you to plan, configure, test and administer a DR solution based on VMware Site Recovery Manager.
NetApp MetroCluster High Availability and Disaster Recovery Platform
NetApp MetroCluster is a disaster recovery software suite that uses array-based storage clustering along with replication to provide rapid, zero data loss disaster recovery (DR) between sites that are up to 185 miles away from one another. Progent offers online or on-premises access to a NetApp MetroCluster consultant who can help your business to design, configure, administer, upgrade, test and repair a disaster recovery solution based on NetApp MetroCluster. Progent can help you to select a topology for your MetroCluster environment that meets your functional needs and IT budget. Progent can make sure you adhere to best practices for installing your MetroCluster environment by providing guidance with procedures such as assigning disk pools and shelf IDs, arranging plexes layout, setting up FlexVol volumes, setting up NetApp Snapshot, installing Cisco and Brocade switches, designing a tiebreaker mechanism, designing a configuration replication network, and verifying your MetroCluster disaster recovery system to prove compliance with information assurance standards and government requirements.
High Availability Load Balancing
Progent provides high availability load balancing consulting that addresses system load balancing, load balanced applications, network infrastructure routing, and content delivery technology such as F5 Networks 3DNS. Non-stop load balancing products for which Progent can provide consulting services include Windows Server 2003 and 2008 Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Access Suite and Presentation Server, Cisco CSS, Cisco Content Engine and ACNS, and F5 Networks BIG-IP. To read more, see Non-stop Load Balancing.
High-Availability Data Centers
Progent's Data Center consultants can show you how to find high availability data centers that meet the specific needs of your business. High availability colocation sites are especially attractive to small and mid-size companies because of their affordability and simplified logistics compared to pursuing a do-it-yourself approach. Trying to build an in-house data center with even a minimum level of fault tolerance is financially prohibitive for the majority of small organizations. Progent is ready to show you how to reap all the advantages of non-stop colo centers by providing a complete range of engineering and maintenance services. To learn more, see Fault Tolerant Colocation Expertise.
High-Availability Interoffice Networking
Progent's branch office network infrastructure consultants can help organizations achieve non-stop inter-site connectivity solutions through fully redundant networks featuring automatic failover. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE engineers can design and implement fault-tolerant Inter-office networks supported by fault tolerant EIGRP network routers or zero-downtime OSPF configurations of Cisco routers. Progent can demonstrate how multi-path connectivity and automatic fail-over can provide affordable 24x7 interoffice connectivity. To read more, see Failsafe Interoffice Connectivity.
Non-stop Internet Connectivity
Progent's Cisco-certified IT consultants can help you design an affordable, high availability Internet configuration solution that can achieve 24x7 Internet access through a broad array of high availability Internet access technologies including high availability BGP, transparent fail-over, and redundant ISPs. Progent offers Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert professionals to show you how to utilize the most up-to-date technology for high availability Internet access to implement a cost-effective, completely redundant Internet network with automatic failover and other capabilities to deliver non-stop Internet access. To find out more, go to Non-stop Internet Access Solutions.
Backup and Recovery Technology Consulting Services
Progent can provide economical remote access to consultants skilled in a wide array of products and technologies that provide solutions for backing up Windows, Mac, and Linux servers and desktops plus notebooks and handhelds. Progent can provide consulting support for leading data protection platforms including Acronis, Backup Exec, BackupAssist Software, CrashPlan, Double-Take Software, Mozy, Retrospect for Macintosh, Apple Time Machine, VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP), and Oracle Solaris FLARs. Progent's consultants can assist you to deploy, upgrade, or troubleshoot backup solutions for a variety of environments such as local, edge to datacenter, cloud-based, or hybrid. To read more, go to Backup and Restore Solutions Consulting Services.
System Center Data Protection Manager Data Recovery Consulting
Progent's certified System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) consultants can help you to create an effective disaster recovery strategy, implement an affordable high-availability network infrastructure, configure a SCDPM-powered backup and restore solution, comprehensively test your DPM system, train your IT personnel or local service providers how to maintain Microsoft SCDPM, or provide complete IT support outsourcing including off-site hosting of Microsoft SCDPM servers in Progent's secure data center facility. To read more, visit Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager Expertise.
Barracuda Backup Cloud and Offsite Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
Barracuda Backup is a low-cost, subscription-based backup and disaster recovery platform for small and mid-size businesses. A Barracuda Backup solution can include a purpose-built hardware storage device built by Barracuda or a software-based appliance with comparable features but which utilizes your existing storage hardware. Barracuda Backup safeguards critical company data produced on-premises, at one or multiple remote locations, or in the cloud. For disaster protection, you can replicate data to the Barracuda Cloud, to Amazon Web Services (AWS), or to any location with a Barracuda appliance. Progent is a certified Barracuda partner and Progent's Barracuda Backup consulting experts offer a wide array of consulting support services to assist your business to plan, configure, manage and debug a backup and disaster recovery system based on Barracuda technology. For details, visit Barracuda Backup and disaster recovery consulting.
ProSight Altaro VM Backup Software for Data Protection and Disaster Recovery
Hornetsecurity's Altaro VM Backup offers small businesses a reliable and affordable platform for backing up and recovering Hyper-V and VMware-powered virtual machines. Altaro VM Backup can be used for on-premises, offsite, multi-site, and cloud architectures and also enables low-cost backup to Azure Block Blob storage. Altaro VM Backup includes advanced capabilities like Immutable Cloud Storage for enhanced recoverability from ransomware. Progent is an Altaro partner and offers a broad range of online or on-premises consulting services to help you to design, install, optimize and troubleshoot a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solution based on Altaro VM Backup software. With ProSight Data Protection Services Altaro VM Backup, Progent delivers a managed backup/recovery service based on Altaro VM Backup software. To read more, visit Altaro VM Backup certified consultants.
ProSight DPS 365 Total Backup Solutions for Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 provides rudimentary archiving but does not have native support for crucial data protection capabilities such as Exchange backups or long-term point-in-time data recovery for OneDrive for Business or SharePoint. Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup delivers a full-featured BDR solution for programmable backup and quick restoration of all your company's M365 mailboxes, Teams Chats, SharePoint sites, OneDrive for Business data, and content on Windows endpoints. Progent is an authorized 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 a low-cost backup-as-a-service alternative that guards M365 components against data loss or corruption caused by user or software error, malicious corruption, and malware attacks like ransomware. To read more, visit ProSight DPS 365 Total Backup solutions for Microsoft 365.
Fully Managed Cloud Backup: ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO
ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO offer small and medium-sized businesses a low cost end-to-end solution for reliable backup/disaster recovery (BDR). Available at a low monthly rate, ProSight DPS ECHO automates and monitors your backup processes and enable rapid restoration of vital data, apps and VMs that have become lost or damaged due to component breakdowns, software glitches, disasters, human error, or malware attacks like ransomware. ProSight DPS ECHO can help you back up, retrieve and restore files, folders, apps, system images, plus Hyper-V and VMware virtual machine images. Critical data can be backed up on the cloud, to an on-premises device, or mirrored to both. Progent's BDR specialists can deliver advanced support to set up ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO to be compliant with government and industry regulatory requirements like HIPAA, FIRPA, PCI and Safe Harbor and, whenever needed, can assist you to restore your business-critical information. Read more about ProSight DPS ECHO managed cloud backup and recovery.
ProSight MSP360 Backup Solutions
Progent can help your company to create, implement and troubleshoot a backup solution built around MSP360 technology. MSP360 offers file/folder or image-based backup/restore for virtual machines and physical computers, supports all popular public clouds, and allows businesses to create a backup solution with a minimum Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and a defined RPO. With ProSight MSP360 Backup, Progent can provide comprehensive monitoring and management of your backup environment to prevent data loss resulting from human miscues, computer errors, ill-intentioned users, and malware attacks like ransomware. To learn more, visit ProSight MSP360 Backup solutions.
Consulting Services Double-Take Solutions for Data Backup and Recovery
Double-Take offers a selection of products designed to deliver small businesses a range of affordable alternatives for replicating and recovering vital workloads including Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Blackberry, and Microsoft SharePoint. Progent's disaster recovery planning consultants have extensive backgrounds incorporating Double-Take products into small company information networks to achieve an advanced level of availability and business continuity readiness at a budget-friendly cost. To find out more, go to Consulting Services Double-Take Software for Data Backup.
Why Choose Progent for Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning?
Since Progent is a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner and provides professional application expertise for a broad variety of small business software programs, Progent is able to assist clients to find efficient information technology solutions that maximize the productivity of your information system. As a Registered Partner for Cisco, Progent offers the support of premier consultants and specialists with expertise in designing, deploying and maintaining networking environments built on Cisco technology. The depth of Progent's technical know-how and Progent's familiarity with the needs of small and midsize businesses make Progent the ideal resource for creating and maintaining an affordable, high-availability network.
How You Can Access Progent's Experts for Disaster Recovery Solutions Support
If you wish to ask Progent about professional expertise for disaster recovery planning, call
An index of content::
Conti ransomware recovery Consultant
Engineers ransomware cleanup and restore
Progent's seasoned ransomware recovery consultants can help you to rebuild a network victimized by a ransomware crypto-worm such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, DopplePaymer, Snatch or Egregor.
Extended Call Desk Costs Support Outsourcing
Virtual Call Desk Economics Remote Troubleshooting
Progent's Help Desk management and co-management service programs enable organizations to cut costs, increase output, and adapt quickly to sudden changes in business circumstances.
Cisco switch patch management Consultants
Smartphone patch management Consult
Progent's managed services for software and firmware patch management provide businesses of all sizes a versatile and cost-effective solution for assessing, testing, scheduling, implementing, and documenting updates to your servers, endpoint devices printers and scanners, infrastructure appliances such as routers and Wi-Fi access points, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices such as sensors and robotics.
Remote Support SQL Server 2019 Disaster Recovery
SQL Server 2019 Machine Learning Server IT Consultant
Progent's certified SQL Server 2019 consultants can help your organization to evaluate the business case for migrating to SQL Server 2019 and can provide rapid remote or on-premises access to experts in system planning and deployment, application development, database administration, and cybersecurity.
SharePoint Server Network Consultant
Immediate Professional SharePoint Portal Server
Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants offer businesses of any size consulting, troubleshooting, and development expertise for SharePoint and SharePoint Online. SharePoint is an advanced collaboration platform that utilizes web-based technology for efficiently coordinating people, groups and information. Microsoft SharePoint Server offers a common spot for your employees or clients to access, organize, share and interact with useful information, files, and software and to communicate with one another. SharePoint allows quicker and better decisions, more effective access across groups and more economical business practices. Windows SharePoint Services join employees, clients, workgroups and major tasks with the information they've developed in a way that makes data convenient to locate, retrieve and re-use. Progent's certified SharePoint experts can assist your organization to maintain your existing SharePoint ecosystem or migrate to the current version of SharePoint Server or to SharePoint Online.
Biggest IT Consulting Services Small Business
Microsoft Small Office Information Technology Manager
Progent provides the services of Microsoft and Cisco-Premier IT support professionals to show clients affordable alternatives to help companies optimize the benefits of Microsoft and Cisco technology. For networks that span from remote offices to nationwide corporations, Progent's network engineers can help you improve your network's e-mail architecture, security, reliability, throughput, and network administration.
Postini Technical Support
Support and Setup Antivirus
E-Mail Guard is Progent's economical antispam and virus defense managed service that gives small companies enterprise-quality defense from spam, viruses, DHA attacks, and other forms of email-borne assaults on computer networks. E-Mail Guard is powered by Postini's perimeter management technology, a sophisticated library of web-managed antispam and antivirus services that stop email assaults before they are able to penetrate the company firewall. Perimeter Manager also allows administrators track and manage their email systems, irrespective of server platform, hardware technology, or geographic location.
QuickBooks Pro Application Consulting
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central Integration Support
Progent can provide you with application developers who can customize your Microsoft Business Solutions ERP, MRP, and accounting system applications to meet your unique company requirements. Progent's Microsoft consultants offer expertise in Microsoft Microsoft Axapta, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Business Management Software, Microsoft Solomon, and Microsoft Retail Management System. Progent also provides custom e-Commerce consulting support for secure, corporate-wide resource sharing plus integration with CRM applications.
Intrusion Detection SonicWall NSA 3650 Firewall
SonicWall NSSP 12000 Firewall IT Services
Progent's certified SonicWall firewall experts can show you how to integrate, manage, and tune SonicWall firewall appliances including the newer SonicWall TZ and NSa families of firewalls and the legacy SonicWall PRO 2040 products. Progent's CISSP and CISA-certified cybersecurity consultants can show you how to incorporate SonicWall firewalls into an end-to-end network protection solution and design security into your corporate processes.
Lync Server 2013 Front End Pool Services
Microsoft Professional Lync Server 2013 Instant Messaging
Lync Server 2013, rebranded Skype for Business, enables businesses of any size to create a manageable and secure communications environment that supports the modern BYOD computing style with instant messaging, presence, web conferencing with app sharing, and both IP and PSTN telephony enabled for a wide assortment of desktop and mobile clients. Progent's certified Lync Server 2013 experts and system architects can help you to assess the advantages of Lync 2013, design an on-premises, cloud-based (via Lync Online) or mixed model suitable for your current and long-term goals, deploy Lync Server 2013 in a way that expedites your ROI, and deliver live online and onsite training to your management staff and users. Progent has expertise in key components of a Lync Server 2013 deployment that include Windows Server, SQL Server and Exchange Server, and Progent can assist your organization to combine Lync Server 2013 with key Office and Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook and PowerPoint.
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