Workstations - Disaster Recoverys Untouched Opportunity

Whitepaper

Workstations: Disaster Recoverys untouched opportunity

By Nick Cavalancia

MAX Insight

Workstations: Disaster Recoverys Untouched Opportunity | 2 FOLLOW US & SHARE

Table of Contents

What do you consider a disaster? 3

Whats in a workstation? 4

Recovering the workstation: Let me count the ways 5

Disasters: Your opportunity in the cloud 7

Conclusion 8


What do you consider a disaster?

Often, the mention of Disaster Recovery produces thoughts of monsoons and hurricanes, complete chaos, no power, etc. In reality, your customer defines it simply as an event that creates an inability for the business to function. Disasters come in many shapes and sizes the natural disasters we all think about, but also chemical spills, building fires, broken water pipes, and, on a much smaller scale, a virus-infested server.

When you ask a company about their IT disaster recovery plans, youll inevitably hear about backups of data and servers, use of server virtualization, even hot or cold disaster sites. But rarely do you hear about workstations. And thats odd, because while its great that a company can get all their IT infrastructure back up and running, but if there are no client machines to connect to the infrastructure, what good is it?

At best, workstations are an afterthought. But the reality is without them, a business simply cannot operate.

Even MSPs are guilty of being ill-prepared when it comes to workstations. Many of you may lean back on the we have a workstation image line of thinking, but its worth considering that, while an image may serve as the basis for a workstation, a given machine usually has been modified from the image by either managed changes, such as Group Policies, scripts, manual updates, etc. or by unmanaged changes a.k.a., the user of that workstation customizing it to their liking. For a user to be productive, they need a workstation recovered to as close to the last known state as is possible.

The issue for MSPs really comes down to what your SLA dictates you need to provide in the wake of a disaster as it pertains to workstations. It is merely a simple image or are you supposed to reestablish each workstation back to a place where the user can be productive? If its more the latter, the image simply wont cut it. And, for the MSP, thats actually a good thing as you will see in this whitepaper, it means you have an opportunity to make more revenue while providing better service for your customers.

The goal of this whitepaper is to introduce you to Cloud-based backup and recovery as your most comprehensive, most reliable, highest available, and fastest means to recover workstations and conveying the value to your customers. Well do so by establishing what needs to be recovered, discussing the ways you can recover a complete workstation (with pros and cons of each), and covering when you will need to recover.


Whats in a workstation?

When considering the recovery of a workstation, lets start by thinking of it in three parts:

Operating System Applications Personal Settings

Each of these parts is necessary to, in sum total, create a secure and productive working environment for the user. The OS is the obvious winner of the Most Critical award. Recovery needs to consider not just the basic OS, but the current version of the OS, including patches and updates. That means you have to hit a constantly moving target. Also, different parts of a customers business may require different OSes to accommodate application, security or accessibility requirements, so youll need to consider, in extreme disaster cases, the recovering more than one type of OS. Applications are in a similar situation. As business needs change, versions of applications are updated, applications are replaced with competitors, and no two departments use all the same applications. One part of accounting may be using version11 of the accounting app because they havent been upgraded like the other half that are on version 12. Every workstation OS and the corresponding specific applications need to be considered; its more than just installing Office. Personal Settings are a bit of a conundrum how much value should you place on them? Can users work efficiently and effectively without them or do they need their exact old environment to function? Consider the value of a single shortcut, say, on the desktop of a Windows 7 machine (the most prominent OS in use at the time of this papers writing). Whats it worth to the customer (and, therefore, is it worth recovering)? Take this example about a shortcut to heart to see the value in every part of personal settings: A users Windows 7 machine is recovered and the icon for Microsoft Word that used to be on their desktop is no longer there. So they call the helpdesk and say My Word got uninstalled. The helpdesk technician asks them to find it in the Start Menu (its there, of course), then proceeds to ensure its installed via the Control Panel. Then it dawns on them oh they mean the shortcut is missing! The technician decides to help them create a new shortcut to Word. Would you right click your desktop, point to New and choose Shortcut? to which the user responds I did and nothing happened. Are you right or left-clicking? The story could keep going on, but even this much helps make the point that something so seemingly insignificant as a shortcut has now taken up about 10 minutes of two peoples time in your customers organization. Whats that worth? Now apply this example to drive mappings, printers, application settings, saved passwords in a web browser, and more. Each of these small parts of the overall user workspace will add up to a lot of lost time and productivity if not recovered. Its safe to say, you need to recover personal settings.


Recovering the workstation: Let me count the ways

This is the point when the conversation usually turns to talking about using images. MSPs like you are usually big on standardization, which is perfect for images. Or is it? The problem with using images even those that are standardized is an image meets the business needs at the time it was created and not necessarily today. Business and security needs change, which results in patches and updates being applied. Users are constantly customizing their personal settings, moving farther and farther away from the standard. So, if you want to stick to your guns about imaging, youll be pushing images of machines down, then requiring them to update, then need to install or update applications, and then somehow push out a (presumably) backed up copy of personal settings. This doesnt sound like the fast and effective way for an MSP to recover workstations and make money doing it. Virtualization is another possibility. Many of you may mandate servers be virtualized for easier recovery, monitoring and management, so building a workstation farm could be a possibility. If this idea resonates with you, it would stand to reason that you wouldnt be creating exact duplicates of each and every workstation (complete with personal settings) but, instead, creating a standard virtual image for accounting, sales, marketing, etc. Applications would need to be installed, personal settings would likely be largely dismissed, and users would need a hardware or software-based thin client to access the virtual workstation. To be effective, this would need to be lying in wait or youll be investing as much time as imaging in addition to the incurred hardware and software costs to setup the virtualization in the first place. Lastly, theres cloud-based backup. With a virtually unlimited storage capacity, block-level backups for small daily transmission sizes and the potential for a hybrid implementation that includes on-premise backups for fast (and redundant) restores, cloud backup presents itself as a viable method of backing up every workstation. Restores would comprehensively put each workstation back into its unique last known state, including OS, applications and personal settings. Table 1 shows a number of ways you could recover Workstations after a disaster.

RECOVERY METHOD

RECOVERY RATING

4 BEST 2 GOOD 0 POOR

RECURRING REVENUE?

RECOVERY TESTING

FEES? PROS CONS

IMAGING

OS 4 No Yes Standardized

images to lower support times Multiple machines can be imaged simultaneously

Multiple OSes require separate images Base images wont include OS updates & patches Wont address specific

Applications 2

Personal Settings

0


application needs Wont recover personal settings

VIRTUAL-IZATION

OS 4 Possibly No Fastest way to get

the customer working IF already setup Quickly scalable solution

Requires additional server hardware and some kind of thin client Same multiple OS issue as imaging Probably have one environment for multiple clients so applications wont be setup No personal settings recovered

You still need to recover each physical workstation (unless you move the customer to virtualized workstations)

Applications 2

Personal Settings

0

HYBRID CLOUD RECOVERY

OS 4 Yes Yes Can singularly

create an exact copy of each workstation Block-level changes for speedy backups Infinitely scalable Can be used for bare-metal recovery Completely restores a workstation back to its last known state

Local storage only scales with additional hardware at time of backup

Applications 4

Personal Settings

4

Table 1: Comparing the pros and cons of each method of recovering workstations


Disasters: Your opportunity in the cloud

Once youve identified customers that are concerned with recovering from any kind of disaster (which is every one of them), you now have an opportunity to include workstations and provide that recovery service in a way that benefits both the customer and you. Hybrid cloud backup and recovery of workstations provides the highest level of reliability and availability as part of your solution. With world-class data centers throughout the world providing multiple levels of redundancy and the highest encryption available, your customer can rest assured that what is backed up is secure and available at a moments notice. The obvious Achilles heel of the cloud side of backup and recovery is the customers Internet connection if its too small or down, the conversation about restoring from the cloud comes to a screeching halt. Which is why hybrid cloud backup and recovery is the only viable way to make the cloud work in this situation. By utilizing an on-premise NAS device (provided by you or the customer) and a unified backup solution that manages both local and cloud-based storage, you now can offer the speed of an on-premise solution with the reliability, redundancy and availability of a cloud-based solution. Its not just the customer; there are benefits for the MSP as well. Unlike imaging, which is a one-time service, cloud backup and recovery creates a few sources of revenue:

Monthly recurring storage fees priced per GB, the more the customer wants to put in the cloud, the more revenue for the MSP.

Yearly or Quarterly recovery testing fees depending on the SLA with the customer, you will need to

be testing recoveries from both local and cloud-based storage to ensure response times are accurate.

Recovery Planning fees This one applies, regardless of whether you choose the cloud as your recovery method. If youre going to be responsible for anything from a single workstation to all of them, youll need to build the workstation recovery plan and integrate it into your recovery plans for servers and the network.

Recovery fees Its important to also note that a hybrid cloud backup provides you with the most

automated (read: least amount of manual work) method of recovering workstations, making this the most cost-effective way for your business to enter the workstation recovery market and make the most money doing so!


Conclusion

As it turns out, disasters are great for business! Yours, that is.

And its not just your business that benefits; your business relationship with your customers also improves. By offering a comprehensive disaster recovery solution to your customers, you are providing them with a better product that keeps their business running while increasing your revenue. Theres nothing more solidifying in a business relationship than you having their back. Workstations are the obvious red-headed stepchild of disaster recovery. They need to be a part of the plan to effectively get a business running again. Youll need to convince your customers of the need to include them, the challenges of users being effective with only a base environment instead of their workstation, and the benefits of completely getting all of the business back to a pre-disaster state. Once youve cleared this hurdle with your customers, its obvious hybrid cloud backup and recovery is the best option not only for your customer (who benefits from the most reliable, secure and fast recovery method available), but also for you, by increasing your recurring fees, lowering labor costs and providing the highest level of service.


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What do you consider a disaster?Whats in a workstation?When considering the recovery of a workstation, lets start by thinking of it in three parts:

Recovering the workstation: Let me count the waysDisasters: Your opportunity in the cloudConclusion

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Workstations - Disaster Recoverys Untouched Opportunity