Government Technology - November 2007 - (Page Symantec2)

Getting Ready COOP and disaster recovery often are used interchangeably, but there are important distinctions. Typically COOP is an element of an overall disaster recovery strategy. Specifically COOP is the process of developing arrangements and procedures to ensure that an agency’s most important functions remain operational. “COOP is keeping the business operational,” said Alec Chalmers, Symantec state and local sales director. “For example, COOP says if a bank system goes down, a backup system quickly takes its place — and that backup system could be at a completely different site. Emergency operations, employee paychecks, utilities — these are the sorts of services that neither government nor citizens can afford to lose.” Disaster recovery, on the other hand, returns systems to operation after they are brought down. In modern times, disaster lurks around many corners, be it hurri- canes, fires or even terrorism. Therefore, having a strategy to respond to an event and restore IT infrastructure is vital. “COOP could be part of your disaster recovery plan with disaster recovery being the worst-case scenario,” explained Chalmers. “What if all my hardware is gone? What if all my sites are gone? I need to have a way to recover.” But implementing these strategies can be costly. This is especially true if such efforts are undertaken as individual projects. Formulating and implementing appropriate COOP and disaster recovery strategies can be particularly daunting for smaller government agencies with limited resources. However, consolidation and standardization projects provide the perfect opportunity to deploy COOP and disaster recovery solutions without purchasing new hardware for backup. One advantage offered by Symantec is that its software-based solutions are highly flexible and work across multiple environments. Software solutions, instead of hardware duplication, mean agencies can plan COOP and disaster recovery strategies into their consolidation and upgrade projects. Symantec products such as Veritas NetBackup, NetBackup PureDisk and Storage Foundation let agencies fail over mission-critical applications to existing hardware — reducing the need for purchasing costly new servers and storage infrastructure solely for backup. Many vendors ask clients to fit their individual requirements into rigid solution templates and rely on costly hardware duplication. But Symantec’s softwarebased solutions are adaptable and budgetfriendly. Storage Foundation, for example, can seamlessly move data across an array of server architectures while providing online storage within a heterogeneous OS environment. To guard against data loss in the wake of a disaster, Veritas Volume Replicator can replicate data over any distance, within any storage device and among any operating system without impacting the performance of vital applications. “It’s not a one size fits all,” said Skip Farmer, Symantec COOP specialist. “Agencies can use pieces they already have in place and then build and expand on that. With that flexibility, they end up spending a lot less money because the software provides support for different environments and configurations.” And the flexibility Symantec’s solutions offer allows agencies to scale their systems to meet future needs without compro- ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - November 2007

Government Technology - November 2007 Contents Point of View Way Back Machine The Last Mile GT Spectrum Big Picture Building Better Government Up Close Inspector Gadget By the Numbers Money Talking No Greenwashing Pinching Pennies Bay Bridge Bustle Two Cents Products Signal: Noise

Government Technology - November 2007

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