A Simple Disaster Recovery Plan

Do you have one SCO Server in your organisation? How quickly could you bring that server back online if the hardware fails? How easily could you have a hot back-up of this server, ready to go in the event of a disaster?

This service is aimed at the one SCO server you or your customers have in their organisation. They already back them up to tape but how long would the recovery take, do they know how to recover and what is the cost to the business if this server's off line?

Let SCO Professional Services help provide the answer.

There are two things needed to provide an online hot Disaster Recovery server - firstly a machine to backup to, and secondly the tools necessary to do this. The backup server can be either a duplicate one of hardware specification, one of similar specification or even a virtualised server. The server would need to be licensed or could be licensed with a simple base license and the appropriate production licenses added at the appropriate time. The tools to backup the server up can be installed by SCO Professional Services to back up your data at a time that suits you and your application(s). The choices are varied:

• shared storage so your data is accessible from multiple servers should the need arise
• mirror data across filesystems or servers with the help of partnered software or within your own application, if supported
• copy an overnight backup of your data to another server ready for us the next day using utilities provided free with the operating system
• replicate your users, printers and configuration files as often as you need
• take control of your services and application(s) with our tailored scripts which we will build with you and show you how they easily work
• do you need an automated failover to another server or do you need to make the decision to switch
• look at the tools SCO has available for monitoring the server and its hardware and having this report any changes to you direct
• bundle in Support for post-sales service and insurance
• install disaster recovery partnered software to provide a one button restore facility

The solution, though, is the same: Allow one of our Professional Consultants to speak to you for a brief and friendly chat to talk about your requirements. Simply call 08700 994 992 in the UK, or or email ukpriority@sco.com with your contact details and how you'd prefer to be contacted, and one of our Professional Services team will be in touch.

Typically an installation is one day to install the hardware and operating system, the second day to configure the second machine to your requirements and the third to provide the replication / fail-over solution. During this time we work with you to ensure your current production server is also operating at peak efficiency. Whether it's a payroll database, Samba shares or our own Office Mail Server (OMS) data, let us help you protect your investment with the minimum of disruption and give you the maximum control and peace of mind.

Customer Testimonial

"One of our customers, Hill Hire PLC, a member of HBOS Group, was having several problems with their Unixware 7.1.4 system hardware.

"I contacted SCO Support and they advised me on fixing the problems and suggested their Manual Failover Script. I agreed and one of the SCO engineers visited our site to assess the problem. He explained that a 2 server/shared storage configuration was a far better solution and they had a manual fail over script called 'activate' to control it which was installed.

"The 'activate' script emails IT support if the cluster has gone down and it is just a simple two minute job to run the 'activate' script on the 2nd server which re-establishes the IP alias and mounts the required filesystems. The 'activate' script can also be tailored to a company's needs ie: as well as the IP aliasing and filesystem mounting, various applications can be started within the script. Since the installation of the 'activate' script we haven't had one single a problem. It is a far more robust system than before."

Graham Unsworth, IT Consultant -Techware Solutions Ltd