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Automated DRM for Database Management and Business Continuity
[March 25, 2015]

Automated DRM for Database Management and Business Continuity


By Lakshman Narayanaswamy Having continuous access to corporate data is critical for any business, and even a short interruption can cause significant financial loss. There are plenty of threats businesses face when it comes to ensuring that systems and data can recovered in the event of a disaster, natural or not. For example, the recent blizzard that hit northeastern US caused widespread power outages that undoubtedly impacted businesses, especially ones that didn't have a viable disaster recovery plan in place. The storm, called 'Juno', was so massive that it could be seen forming from the International Space Station well before it actually hit ground, giving people time to prepare. In fact, leaders in several major cities advised workers to stay home, and hundreds of schools were closed.



Besides being buried in snow, many areas in New England were hit particularly hard, losing power in the midst of the storms fury. Businesses felt the impact, especially ones without an automated DR system in place. In a natural disaster like this, businesses are at risk of losing access to the critical information stored in their databases. And, often times, complicated DR configurations are out of date when disaster actually does strike. Further, there are often only a few people in the organization that have the technical knowledge and skill to configure DR, and if they can't access the data center, the problem gets worse fast.

Having data replicated and backed up is not enough to ensure full business continuity in the event of a disaster. Today, many businesses companies often have infrastructure in on-premises and in the cloud (cloud is very popular for DR), and need automated and agnostic DRM tools in place to perform what only a few IT administrators have the expertise to do manually. These DRM tools need to integrate seamlessly with infrastructure, not only to recover data instantly, but ones that don't interfere with production of the infrastructure. In addition, an adequate DRM tool needs to cover the entire DR lifecycle of monitoring, managing and recovering systems and the critical data that is stored on the most widely used databases, including: Oracle Database, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostGres and MaxDB.


In the end, it's not a question of if a disaster happens, but when it does. With automated DRM in place, businesses can reduce the amount of time to recover data by eliminating the manual steps previously required to do so. Through a single an intuitive console, even IT administrators with limited expertise can manage multiple databases throughout the entire DR lifecycle, regardless of what replication technologies are in use. Overall, automated DRM has become a necessity for businesses that are faced with the very real threat of disasters, whether natural or not.

About the author: Lakshman Narayanaswamy Co-Founder & Vice President – Products, Sanovi Technologies Armed with over 20 years of experience in the networking, information and storage management, and IT recovery and Disaster Recovery Solutions spaces of the information technology industry, Lakshman is one of the co-founders of Sanovi and also the Vice President of its Products division. As VP – Products, Lakshman is responsible for product management and marketing to ensure the Sanovi DRM suite of software remains a market leader and exceeds customer expectations.

Before co-founding Sanovi, Lakshman co-founded Sanrise, a global storage service provider company. Prior to that, Lakshman has held engineering and technology strategy positions at Auspex, Silicon Graphics, and the prestigious Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Lakshman holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia, USA, and has five patents to his credit in the area of Storage and Data Management.

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