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In today's business world, data has become one of the most valuable resources. Data loss or IT downtime can result in significant financial losses, decreased customer trust, and damage to a company's reputation. This is why business continuity and data protection, closely linked with Disaster Recovery and High Availability of data centers (DCs), are increasingly crucial.
Nearly every company today has its own data center, as IT is an integral part of the business. However, increasing demands for its reliability have become not only a technological challenge but also a market necessity. Specialists seek optimal ways to enhance DC reliability to ensure uninterrupted operation and protection against large-scale threats.
Disaster recovery refers to the ability of an IT infrastructure to withstand critical events, such as natural disasters, technological failures, or human error, and quickly recover with minimal losses. It’s not just about hardware protection, but also about meticulous recovery planning.
The primary principle of disaster recovery is the use of clustered configurations. Servers are geographically distributed, ensuring the unity of the data storage network. Main and backup sites are created, operating within a single system.
To protect against natural and man-made disasters, the main data placement and processing systems are duplicated. Essentially, this is another manifestation of a geographically distributed system. The presence of a backup data center allows IT infrastructure operations to continue in case the primary site is damaged.
Disaster recovery is closely tied to factors such as RTO and RPO:
High availability refers to a data center’s ability to continue operations even when individual components or systems fail. This is achieved by duplicating key infrastructure elements and implementing mechanisms for automatic switching to backup resources in case of a failure.
Key Methods of Ensuring High Availability:
While both concepts share the common goal of ensuring business continuity, they address different types of risks.
Disaster recovery focuses on restoring business processes after major incidents, such as natural disasters or large-scale technological failures. High availability, on the other hand, ensures daily operational stability and system continuity even in the face of localized failures.
High availability is a key measure of a data center’s reliability. Downtime refers to the period when data center equipment is not operational, including scheduled maintenance and emergency situations. The shorter this period, the higher the data center’s classification.
The Uptime Institute developed a system of tiers to assess DC reliability:
While building disaster-resistant and high-availability data centers in Ukraine is possible, fully guaranteeing their protection in current conditions is challenging. Ongoing threats such as shelling, power outages, and territorial seizures create significant risks for continuous business operations. For this reason, many Ukrainian enterprises are showing increased interest in migrating or establishing backup data centers in European Union countries.
Firstly, placing data centers in the EU and accessing them through encrypted internet channels with guaranteed speeds significantly enhances business resilience, allowing companies to focus on strategic tasks without interruption.
Secondly, disaster recovery capabilities based on geographically distributed data center infrastructure ensure business continuity and protect against technical threats that may arise in emergencies.
Thus, by choosing a European data center that operates within the legal framework of the EU, Ukrainian companies gain higher stability and security for their business processes, making them virtually immune to external risks.
ALESTA, as the only system integrator in Ukraine with Dell Technologies Titanium and Cisco Gold status, has extensive experience in successfully migrating and building data centers for Ukrainian companies in secure EU territories. We are capable of implementing the most complex IT infrastructure modernization scenarios and constructing disaster-resistant data centers. In our upcoming materials, we will detail personalized solutions for relocating or building server IT infrastructure, taking into account business specifics, geographical risks, and data protection needs.
These are the primary factors that determine the reliability of modern data centers. Businesses facing constant natural and man-made threats must invest in resilient IT infrastructure capable of maintaining uninterrupted operations under any conditions. Investing in this level of reliability preserves critical data, protects reputation, and supports the company’s steady growth, even during periods of instability.
