IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Troubleshooting and support > Disaster recovery > Overview of disaster recovery
Disaster recovery procedures
From the perspective of IBM BPM and IBM Business Monitor, disaster recovery means that the production environment can be restored to the secondary data center through a well-defined backup method.
Disaster recovery for IBM BPM and IBM Business Monitor is supported through disk replication technology. A snapshot of the original production environment is taken, and data is restored and validated in the secondary data center.
Figure 1. Backup to a remote storage system
Some backups might not work properly after restoration. You need to identify and discard those backups and use only the valid ones.
Part of your comprehensive disaster recovery plan includes determining the recovery point objective and recovery time objective based on your real business needs.
Figure 2. Recovery point objective and recovery time objective
- The recovery point objective defines how much data you can afford to lose between the original environment and the restored
environment. From a business perspective, a smaller recovery point objective means that fewer business transactions are lost, which is critical for normal business operations.
To achieve a smaller recovery point objective, you must increase the frequency with which you back up the production environment. However, you must also consider the cost and effect of frequent backups on your production environment. The more times you back up, the more copies you have to maintain.
- The recovery time objective defines how long you can wait until the restored environment can continue with normal processing.
From a business perspective, you might want to achieve different recovery
time objectives based on your own business needs.
To define the appropriate recovery time objective, consider the work that must be done during disaster recovery. Increasing the frequency of your backups does not always lead to a smaller recovery time objective.
For example, if the server startup takes 20 minutes, you cannot reduce recovery time below 20 minutes, no matter how often you back up. You would have to re-architect your server to start faster or get a faster machine.
Define your recovery point objective and recovery time objective goals according to your business needs. You can achieve those goals through regular IT operations, as described in the following topics:
- Backing up data
A backup is a copy of the production environment. There are several ways to make a backup. Each method imposes some constraints on the production environment, and each presents some advantages and disadvantages. - Restoring data
If a disaster occurs in the primary data center, you can continue to provide business support if you have a valid backup. You restore the backup to the secondary data center and then verify the restored data.
- Verifying restored data
After you restore the backup of your production environment to the secondary data center, verify the data to determine whether the backup is a valid copy.