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Xyz Computers Disaster Plan

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When composing a disaster plan the most important step is to perform a very comprehensive investigation of all risks in the network. This includes all computer systems, servers, networks, and etc. When investing the network there are many risks to consider. These risks can include attacks from viruses, deletion of data from company employees, floods or other natural disasters and etc. When listing these threats it should be taken in effect which risks have more impact on the company. Once risks are determined and put in categories of importance, XYZ Computers should consider some very common questions.
• How would the following affect XYZ Computers? o Virus attacks o Loss of personal information (company’s or employees) o Power outages o Loss of Internet service o Loss of phone service o Natural Disasters (floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, fires, and etc.)
• What would be company costs in the event of any of these disasters?
• What can XYZ Computers do to lessen the effect of disasters on our company?
• What can XYZ Computers do to prevent certain disasters from happening? Some companies in areas that power outages are common may have emergency power in place. They will also back up all of their data on RAID tapes frequently. While prevention can cost the company money, recovery from disasters that could have been prevented could cost much more. Some businesses have even had to close due to certain disasters that could have been prevented. “The Boy Scout motto of Be Prepared applies to almost everything in life” (Brister, 2010). XYZ Computers must know what data is the most important for the company as a whole. The data and applications must be able to be recovered quickly. The longer a business is down the more money it costs. This is why it is so important to test the disaster plan right after you have the plan and periodically. A company can never be too prepared. XYZ Computers’ Information Systems Technology (IST) Department is located on the first floor of the building. This part of the United States is very prone to heavy rain and flooding. Flooding has recently occurred in this building causing the servers to become damaged. No firewall is currently in place. This gives easy access to malicious activity. Not only does the company’s information need to be protected; the Company’s 10,000 employee records also need to be protected. The payroll is on the same server as the email. Not having a firewall to protect this information could prove to be disastrous if not corrected. This is why it is pertinent to develop a disaster plan. The first step to this plan would be to get the servers off the floor. The first consideration would be to move the IST Department to another floor. For some companies this may be impossible therefore a server rack could be an excellent choice for XYZ Computers. XYZ Computers should install a switch box to connect a single keyboard, mouse and monitor to several of their servers. This would cut costs on equipment and help organize the work area. This will also help with preventing damage to servers from flooding. The next step is to have a packet filtering firewall set up for the network. This would allow for a more secure internal network. I believe creating a demilitarized zone (DMZ) would be beneficial to XYZ Computers. “A DMZ consists of three ports on the firewall; the public networks on one port, the private network on another port and the DMZ one the third port. The DMZ is a less secure area than the private network. DMZ includes web and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers”. (Regan, 2006, p. 567). Once the firewall is set up the IST department will need to examine all firewall logs frequently for any suspicious activity. Using a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) system is the final step in protecting the data and applications from being lost and allowing any data or applications to be recovered from failed disk drives. For exceptional results one must understand how the RAID system operates. “RAID is a category of disk drive that employs two or more drives in combination into a logical unit for fault tolerance and performance. RAID disk drives are used on servers.” (Regan, 2006, p. 598). The RAID system can also be made useful on workstations. This will allow for increased storage functions and reliability through redundancy. RAID schemes divide and duplicates between several disk drives. Each scheme sustains a different balance between two goals; increase data reliability and input/output performance. Some of the schemes continue operating even when part of the system fails.
There are six levels on the RAID system. They are as follows according to Regan (2006)
• RAID 0 – Disk striping – Data striping is the spreading out of locks of each file across multiple disks. It offers no fault tolerance, but it increases performance. Level 0 is the fastest and most efficient form of RAID and is supported by Windows Servers, Linux, and NetWare without additional hardware and software.
• RAID 1 – Disk mirroring/duplexing – Disk mirroring duplicates a partition onto two hard drives. When information is written, it is written to both hard drives simultaneously. It increases performance and provides fault tolerance. Disk duplexing is a form of disk mirroring. Disk mirroring uses two hard drives connected to the same card; disk duplexing uses two controller card, two cables, and two hard drives. Level 1 is also supported by Windows Servers, Linux, and NetWare without additional hardware and software.
• RAID 2 – Disk striping with Error Correction Codes (ECC) - Level 2 uses data striping plus ECC to detect errors. It is rarely used today since ECC is embedded in almost all modern disk drives.
• RAID 3 – ECC stored as parity – Level 3 dedicates one disk to error correction data. It provides good performance and some level of fault tolerance.
• RAID 4 – Disk striping with large blocks – Level 4 offers no advantages over RAID 5 and does not support multiple simultaneously written operations.
• RAID 5 – Disk striping with parity – RAID 5 uses disk striping and includes byte correction on one of the disks. If one disk goes ad, the system will continue to function. After the faulty disk is replaced, the information on the replaced disk can be rebuilt. This system requires at least three drives. It offers excellent performance and good fault tolerance. This also is supported by Windows Servers, Linux, and NetWare without additional hardware and software. Any of the above mentioned levels could be applied to XYZ Computers’ servers. What level used is very dependent on the financial standing of the company and the demand. It is very important that a RAID service be put into action as soon as possible. As I have looked over the demand for this company RAID 0 – Disk stripping along with RAID 1 – Disk mirroring/Disk duplexing should be utilized. RAID 0 is very fast and very efficient. It increase performance but has no fault tolerance. This is the reason RAID 1 should also be used. RAID 1 allows for every hard drive on the system to have an exact clone of data as the first drives. This scheme will continue operating even when one of the drives fails, by allowing the mirror drive to take over. The faulty drive will then be diagnosed and fixed. With RAID 1, disk duplexing is included. With disk duplexing the two drives are on different controller card. This allows for the drive, controller card, and cable to be redundant. (See figure 1)

Figure 1 RAID 1 + 0

In order to receive full protection from any disaster that may occur, this RAID system can be in place at two separate locations. One location could be in place in the same location as XYZ Computers and the other one can be in place at another geographical location. This will allow for double the protection of all data if any natural disasters occur in the future.

References
Brister, D. (2010). Small Business Network Disaster Recovery Planning. Cisco. Retrieved from http://blogs.cisco.com/smallbusiness/small_business_network_disaster_recovery_planning/
LaCie USA. (2011). [Diagram of a RAID 10 array with four drives having 1000GB each drive] LaCie 5big Network RAID Modes. Retrieved from http://www.lacie.com/support/faq/faq.htm?faqid=10607
Regan, P. (2006). Local Area Networks. Retrieved from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/classroom/ic/classroom.aspx

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