Rebuilding IT - business continuity and virtualisation

Even businesses that were not directly impacted by the flood are reassessing their facilities and systems based on a new and more sober assessment of the risks they face.

While undoubtedly traumatic for many companies, this situation offers a unique opportunity for farsighted enterprises to rebuild their IT infrastructure so that it is better and more robust than it was before. The opportunity stems from the fact that they can design their IT systems in a truly integrated manner and thus realise the vision of a converged infrastructure. That is, an enterprise IT system in which servers, storage, networking, applications and data are fully optimised as shared pools of interoperable resources that can be used for the ultimate benefit of the business.  

By getting rid of the clutter and inefficiency of older IT infrastructures that include a mix of legacy systems and newer solutions that are often connected through complicated and error-prone networks, will allow enterprises to reap a number of important benefits including increased reliability and performance, lower operating costs, easier maintenance and greater time and resources available for working on innovative projects that improve competitiveness.

Another aspect of this opportunity, which is particularly relevant to companies in Thailand, is the ability to leverage virtualisation to improve business continuity. Virtualisation involves creating and running multiple virtual machines on a single physical server in order to maximise capacity utilisation and improve cost efficiencies. Business continuity ensures that critical business functions are available to employees, customers, suppliers and partners. At the end of the day, effective business continuity is a critical component of a successful instant-on enterprise. Neither virtualisation nor business continuity is particularly new concepts, but for many companies they have not been well integrated.  

The creation of a virtual machine involves the combining of an operating system, application software and data into a single set of files. The result is much more efficient, cost effective and flexible IT system than one that is based solely on physical assets. This system also enables both mobility and the generation of multiple copies of the machine, both of which are important for business resilience and disaster recovery.  

In order to gain the benefits of the mobility that server virtualisation offers, a company needs to create a networked storage environment that facilitates data management and is linked to multiple locations. This is because for business continuity the enterprise needs to be able to quickly and effectively move its data, including its virtual machines from one location to another. In a situation like the flooding of an industrial estate, a company could move all of its critical computing processes and data to a safe and dry location even as the primary physical infrastructure is being flooded.

Of course, virtualising servers and establishing a networked storage environment are not simple or cost-free exercises, so it is important for enterprises to take stock of their needs and priorities at the outset of their IT infrastructure rebuild. By doing this they can ensure that their mission critical processes and data are the first to be put on virtual machines and thus made more resilient and, if necessary, recoverable.  

Ultimately, creating the systems and processes necessary for effective business continuity through virtualisation will provide the enterprise with additional benefits including greater resilience, improved end-to-end network visibility and, of course, lower costs associated with improved capacity utilisation.  

As Thailand recovers from the floods and companies here rebuild their infrastructures and look to 2012, it is all too easy to put off focusing on business continuity and disaster recovery in favour of more immediate priorities. But this tendency should be resisted and this rare opportunity to rebuild IT infrastructures as better and more effective converged infrastructures should be seized. By doing this our companies can be assured of being truly instant-on enterprises in both good times as well as bad.

 

Varaporn Pintola is general manager of Technology Services, Hewlett-Packard (Thailand).