In this episode of Trilio Insights, our senior solutions architect Rodolfo Casás joins Pete Wright to discuss the critical world of disaster recovery in IT.

Casás breaks down the key differences between backups, high availability, and disaster recovery, emphasizing that while backups are essential, they're not enough for critical systems that can't afford downtime. He explains how high availability has evolved from relying on expensive, "fail-proof" servers to modern cloud-native approaches that assume any component can fail at any time.

The conversation delves into the sobering statistics of data disasters: 82% of breaches involve human error and the average cost of downtime is $1,400 per minute. Casás stresses the importance of thorough disaster recovery planning, including risk assessment, understanding critical applications, and regular testing.

Finally, Casás introduces Trilio's "continuous restore" feature, which aims to dramatically reduce recovery time by pre-staging data on secondary clusters. This approach can significantly speed up disaster recovery, especially for large datasets.

The episode concludes with a call to listeners to learn more about disaster recovery, with Wright emphasizing its importance for anyone who has experienced data loss.

Links & Notes

• Continuous Recovery & Restore
• A Common Misconception- Backup Is Not Disaster Recovery
• High availability is not disaster recovery - Disaster Recovery of Workloads on AWS: Recovery in the Cloud
• Business Data loss and Disaster Recovery Statistics in 2024
• An 8-step Guide for Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan | Kaluari Limited
• Strengthening operational resilience and reducing concentration risk in financial services - Microsoft Service Assurance
• Service Trust Portal

In a world where businesses rely on the constant flow of data and the uninterrupted availability of applications, IT downtime has become an unavoidable reality with far-reaching consequences. This week, Pete Wright sits down with David Safaii, Executive Chairman at Trilio, to explore the causes, consequences, and solutions to one of the most pressing challenges facing businesses in the digital age.

Safaii explains that while the public often hears about catastrophic outages, smaller disruptions occur more frequently than one might think. These outages can be caused by a variety of factors, ranging from hardware failures and network issues to human errors and cyber attacks. The impact of these outages can be staggering, with the average length of an interruption after a ransomware attack in 2022 being 24 days.

The financial costs of downtime are equally alarming. Safaii cites a report stating that the Fortune 500 lost about $1.5 trillion a year in unplanned downtime. However, he emphasizes that the consequences extend beyond just dollars and cents. "In addition to the people in that building, you have to turn people away from the outside. They can't receive the treatment they require. That is the cost of downtime. You can't put a number on that," Safaii says, highlighting the potential impact on healthcare facilities.

Safaii also highlights the reputational damage that companies can suffer due to outages, noting that trust and consistency are key to building brand loyalty. When outages result in data loss or prolonged disruptions, customer satisfaction and trust can be severely impacted.

So, what can businesses do to mitigate these risks? Safaii stresses the importance of having a well-tested disaster recovery plan in place. However, he notes that many organizations fall short in this area, with only 31% testing their DR plan once a year. "Testing can be easy and you can automate it if you've got the right tools," he says, encouraging businesses to prioritize regular testing.

Safaii also dispels the notion that relying on public cloud providers is enough to ensure data protection and application availability. "The number of times I've had conversations about this, where they say, oh, we just charged our public cloud provider. You know, they're there to provide you with the infrastructure to run your applications. They're not there to provide you with application or data protection," he emphasizes, urging businesses to take responsibility for their own disaster recovery measures.

Looking to the future, Safaii encourages businesses to be proactive in their approach to disaster recovery. By investing time, processes, and technology in mission-critical applications, companies can minimize the impact of downtime and build resilience in the face of an ever-evolving landscape of threats. "If you're planning properly and you're prepared, the more you put in, the more you'll get out."

Links & Notes

• Backup & Recovery from Trilio.io

This week on the show, Pete Wright sits down with a panel of experts from Trilio, Red Hat, Accenture, and Dynatrace ahead of their upcoming presentation at Red Hat Summit 2024 in Denver. Kevin Jackson (Trilio), Jan Myklebust (Red Hat), Usmin Mir (Accenture), and Steve Weinert (Dynatrace) discuss their collaboration on achieving IT service continuity through ecosystem-powered AIOps and event-driven automation.

The panel explores the origins of their partnership, which began with a project called Navan, a hybrid multi-cloud environment designed to drive co-creation and innovation for joint customer opportunities. As the collaboration evolved, the team tackled challenges such as digital sovereignty and operational resiliency, bringing together the expertise of each partner to create comprehensive solutions.

The conversation delves into the importance of open source ideology in fostering effective collaboration among ecosystem players and the challenges of working with large hyperscalers. The panelists also share their expectations for Red Hat Summit 2024, emphasizing the significance of raising awareness about the potential of ecosystem collaborations and the reality of cloud downtime.

Tune in to discover the journey of this unique partnership and gain insights into the future of IT service continuity in an increasingly complex cloud landscape.

Links & Notes

• Migrating Cloud Native Applications to Support Cloud Sovereignty - Usman Mir & Jan Myklebust
• Red Hat Summit 2024