Clients’ peace of mind has always been one of the main concerns of PROVYS Technologies. Stable and predictable software systems make users feel safe, supported, and able to focus on what matters. Reliability and data protection are the key features that give peace to corporate management. And a well-prepared disaster recovery plan is particularly important for every broadcaster or media house as they create and manage large volumes of information or data.
Every broadcaster should have recovery strategies
A lot of data is important and some is vital to the survival and continued operation. The impact of data loss or corruption from hardware failure, human error, hacking or malware could be serious and a plan for data backup and restoration of electronic information is therefore essential. Generally, every broadcaster should have technology recovery strategies in place to restore hardware, applications and data in time to meet the needs of the business recovery.
Organisations running multiple software systems such as SAP, PROVYS Sphere, and e.g. Dalet, have to coordinate all three platforms into a single unified recovery architecture. The goal is to restore business critical workflows, not just individual systems, within defined recovery time and recovery point objectives.
Disaster recovery plan
Every multi system disaster recovery plan focuses on interdependencies, data consistency, and sequenced recovery. Such multi-system recovery plan should have various components.
Core components:
- business impact analysis which identifies critical processes of each system and all cross-system dependencies;
- architecture and redundancy strategy, namely data replication strategies for databases, secondary site or cloud to standby and standardisation of software versions and configurations;
- data consistency checks together with unified recovery sequences, where typical order would be <core infrastructure (networks) – databases – application servers – storages – integrations – user access>;
- backup and restoration strategy, which would contain decisions on full or incremental backups, types of offsite storages and regularity of integrity checks;
- regular testing on different levels from tabletop to all systems;
- plan for internal and external communication including pre-approved notifications;
- and finally, governance and documentation, such as runbooks, manuals, periodic reviews and updates.
The right disaster recovery system
There is no standard product called disaster recovery clients could buy from different vendors. In multi-system environment, interdependencies are important and vendors should be prepared to assist their clients to prepare a comprehensive professional disaster recovery strategy.
If it made you nervous enough, don’t despair. The odds of disaster are actually slim. But keep in mind the old saying that the experts at PROVYS experience constantly: “fortune favours the prepared.”
If you want to be safe than sorry, it is the right time to ask about the options to make an informed decision. Book a consultation of PROVYS Sphere and secure your playout with Stream Circle.
Contributed by:
Martin Junek, Digital Imaging and Electronic Media Evangelist
Milan Kopačka, Customer Care Director at PROVYS Technologies
