DR/COOP
While federal agencies always had requirements for Disaster Recovery (DR) and Continuity of Operations (COOP), 9/11 provided a wake up call that the federal government needed to be more diligent in DR/COOP planning and execution. As a result, new policies and regulations, specifically those outlined in HSPD-12 and FPC65, place agencies under increasing pressure to identify and ensure that their essential function areas are continually available even during the most severe natural and manmade disasters. FPC65 defines COOP as “The activities of individual departments and agencies and their sub-components to ensure that their essential functions are performed. This includes plans and procedures that:
- Delineate essential functions
- Specify succession to office and the emergency delegation of authority
- Provide for the safekeeping of vital records and databases
- Identify alternate operating facilities
- Provide for interoperable communications
- Validate the capability through tests, training, and exercises.”
DR/COOP is more than just implementing a backup strategy for an agency’s data. It is an organizational process that provides a method to ensure that capabilities and services an agency identifies as essential can continue no matter the circumstance. While IT systems by definition are not considered essential functions on their own, they have become absolutely critical in maintaining the ability for an agency to deliver their essential services. More so, IT systems provide the means for agencies to implement robust and resilient DR/COOP solutions that can provide little to no downtime. Combinations of innovative technologies such as resilient networking, mobility, data replication, and cloud computing provide agencies with a wide range of choices that can deliver value during normal operations as well as in a DR/COOP situation.
Benefits agencies can achieve from DR/COOP include:
- Reduced costs
- Increased availability
- Improved performance
- Mobile data solutions
- Achieve mission goals
Merlin International® understands federal DR/COOP requirements, has significant experience helping agencies identify and implement solutions, and has an established methodology for designing federal DR/COOP solutions that meet all federal requirements, as well as each agency’s unique requirements. Merlin has reviewed, tested, and selected a wide range of technology solutions that support DR/COOP as well as provide enhanced services on a day-to-day basis.
Our DR/COOP solutions provide:
- Application availability across a range of recovery-point and recovery-time requirements
- Simple administration to bolster operational efficiency
- Ease of deployment
- Improved recovery times
- Lower overall management costs
- Tools that are needed to restore access without having to make any configuration changes
- Design, test, deploy, and maintain disaster-recovery and business-continuity solutions in both physical and virtual environments
- Deployment into existing infrastructure using Merlin’s replication technologies
- Comprehensive and unified storage architecture, and flexibility and richness to meet different service levels
- Adaptability to ever-changing business demands and needs