EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
IHAB FARHOUD , DIRECTOR , SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING – METNA , VMWARE MIDDLE
EAST , TURKEY AND NORTH AFRICA
Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q
Data centre leaders must focus on Business Continuity planning , and resiliency should be a part of this . In terms of resources , it ’ s important to have Disaster Recovery sites and backup data centres , but true resiliency means Business Continuity and agility : organisations should be able to operate as normal , completely unhindered and be able to maintain all their SLAs at any given time .
The Business Continuity plan should include various components including capacity planning , which should be part of the plan from day-one . This is especially important for organisations that are expecting rapid growth or fluctuations in service demand that could require rapid upscaling or downscaling of capacity , such as computer , storage , network and security resources . Effective capacity planning involves making projections two to five years into the future . The Business Continuity plan should also include Disaster Recovery and maintenance of SLAs , which means you must-have some sort of scalability plan in place .
Data centre leaders should also look to implement automation , such as the automation of service provision , whether it ’ s Software- As-a-Service and applications , Infrastructure-As-a-Service , or anything else . Services should be automated as far as
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THE BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN SHOULD INCLUDE VARIOUS COMPONENTS INCLUDING CAPACITY PLANNING , WHICH SHOULD BE PART OF THE PLAN FROM DAY-ONE . possible using the different tools available . Automation is important to meet increasing demands and pressures on operations at all levels . One of the alternatives to automation when there is a dramatic increase in demand on services , is to try to hire additional staff with the right skills , but this is costly , time-consuming and difficult , especially in this part of world where there is a shortage of many types of IT skills . In addition to increased resiliency , automation helps to overcome challenges presented by the skills shortage and reduces OPEX .
Additionally , moving to the cloud and building a hybrid or multi-cloud model , is a great way of adding resiliency into your data centre . It ’ s no longer sufficient to stick to your on-premise data centre , even with a good Disaster Recovery backup system in place , as it doesn ’ t offer the flexibility that organisations require .
Modernising services and applications is another factor which contributes to additional resiliency .
Furthermore , by adopting and scaling DevOps , organisations can manage and maintain their applications / services more efficiently , adding another layer of resiliency .
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