Quick Insight Blog
As a result, you need to have a solid backup and recovery plan in place. In our experience of managing IT, it is the server documentation element of the backup plan, especially with organizations that use a lot of contract staff, that gets very little attention and as a result puts a bank at a high degree of risk.
Even with the best intentions, most IT departments fail to document their work. The reality is that on a day-to-day basis your contract IT staff are just to busy to get this done unless you make it a separate project. They are taking care of user requests, as they should be.
Even organizations with detailed backup strategies are unlikely to have actually tested their plan and don't really know how long it would take to restore a critical system, or if the data would be usable. With many banks being staffed by contract IT staff, there typically is no coherent IT continuity plan or set of documentation that can be used to speed up the recovery process. To assess your real IT continuity status, ask your IT contractor to review with your their server documentation.
TSG Server Documentation Program
To meet the needs as outlined in the FFEIC guidelines, TSG provides Server Documentation and Virtual Image Backup services to support and complete the activities of your IT personnel.
TSG IT staff will come in and prepare documentation for each server that will be used in the event of an emergency. Project output is a server/network map that details the following information: what does each server do?, what software is running on each server?, how is each server is configured?, are there any special "tweaks" that have been made to make it run?, and how is it connected to other systems?. How much better would you feel knowing that all of the knowledge that currently is in your IT contractor's head were documented and immediately available to you if your current IT contractor were to be unavailable during an emergency?
Virtual Server Software
Virtual Server technology now coming into mainstream IT implementations has huge potential for simplifying and improving the speed and reliability of your sever backup environment. Like its name suggests, virtual server technology enables a single disk image file to be created that is a complete virtual replica of one of your servers.
More importantly, many different virtual images of your servers can be run on one virtual server environment - (another server correctly configured).
This means that you can have actual virtual copies of all your servers running in your data center. These back-up virtual servers will activate immediately and take over all functions should one of your real physical servers fail. Impressive, right?
The implications for virtual server implementations go far beyond just backup. It can contribute significantly to cost savings in an organization through the reduction of a number of actual physical servers into one virtual server.
TSG staff will come in and work with your IT team to "virtualize" your critical IT systems. Join the many banks that are moving to virtual server environments and start benefiting from cost savings, improved backup capabilities, and reduced business continuity risk.
Timing of Virtual Server Deployment
Existing Banks
The typical IT hardware refresh cycle is 3 - 5 years. If you are preparing to refresh or if you are developing your refresh strategy, contact us now for a no obligation discussion about the implications of virtual server deployment at your bank. Just email us or call 877.874.4457 to arrange a telephone conference.
Banks in Organization
If you are a bank in organization, you are in a perfect position to implement virtual server technology and reduce your upfront IT investment, along with the associated physical space and utilities costs. To talk with us about virtual server technology at your bank, simply email us or call 877.874.4457.