RSTP needs E371.5m for backup system

mfanukhona@times.co.sz BABANE – The Royal Science and Technology Park RSTP is in the process of constructing a Disaster Recovery DR Site.

The estimated cost of this special proMect is E . million.

As at March , , government had spent E . million on the proMect.

RSTP has two components, the %iotechnology at 1okwane and IT Park at Phocweni, which were funded by the government.

The estimated cost after completion of these two facilities is E

. This excludes the E . million needed for the backup system.

The site where the structure will be set-up cannot be disclosed for security reasons. A DR is a backup site, actually a place that an entity can temporarily relocate to following a security breach or natural disaster.

Experts also define it as a facility an organisation can use to recover and restore its technology infrastructure and operations when its primary data centre becomes unavailable.

In the next financial year commencing on April , , the RSTP, under the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology, shall need E million to undertake the proMect.

It is stated in the current government budget estimates that E million of these funds is a loan while E . million is from donors and E million shall be withdrawn from public coffers. The money is for consultancy fees and training to support construction of the DR site.

On the other hand, government will spend E million from donor funds on the procurement of hardware and software equipment for its network cyber security.

It will also spend E . million from the Consolidated )und on its 1ational Data Centre 1DC %usiness and Technical Services.

MSTRUCTURES

RSTP is a government company.

In , Sen]o Mala]a, the Senior Communications Officer at RSTP, told the Times S81DA< that the vitality or significance of the DR was underlined by the availability of the two structures, which could not operate efficiently without it.

Mala]a said data storage required an extreme high level of security. The senior communications officer said customers wanted a guarantee for the safety of their delicate information.

Therefore, he explained that the DR served to guarantee safety of information in the event of an unforeseen circumstance occurring at the 1ational Data Centre.

He made an example of a fire outbreak consuming the computerised files, saying such delicate information would still be available at the backup centre.

The senior communications officer said the public enterprise wanted to set up a structure that would kick up, without switching it on, in times of unforeseen emergencies.

³)or us to attract a large clientele locally and internationally, the backup centre is crucial,´ he said two years ago.

He said they had discovered that clients appreciated seeing an infrastructure that would retrieve lost information. He pointed to the fact that the first question a client would ask was µhow safe is our information here"¶

³:e want to eliminate any risk associated with disaster so that our clients are at peace with us,´ Mala]a had said.

Experts say when disaster strikes - more often than not, unexpectedly - the consequences for the business can be unpredictable. They say this unforeseen circumstance could result in a loss of revenue, damaged business reputation, destruction of the production centre, interrupted service delivery, and a loss of credibility with the company¶s customers.

To avoid the risk of putting the business in danger, the experts say it is essential to prepare a business or company to prepare in advance by designing an effective disaster recover plan, which they refer to as DR. One of the main components of a DR plan is the secondary site also known as DR site , which will be used for data storage and rapid recovery in case disaster strikes.

What is a disaster recovery site?

A disaster recovery site is a location used by an organisation for restoring its IT infrastructure and business-critical operations when a primary production centre is affected by a natural or man-made disaster. Disaster recovery sites are often built in a remote location so as to ensure that the disaster which has affected the main site will not affect the secondary site as well.

Creating a DR site allows an organisation to continue conducting operations and delivering services without disruption, until the primary location is restored.

Types of disaster recovery sites

The experts in IT say there are three types of backup sites Cold sites, warm sites and hot sites.

Cold site

A cold site is a backup facility with little or no hardware equipment installed. A cold site is essentially an office space with basic utilities such as power, cooling system, air conditioning and communication equipment, etc. A cold site is the most cost-effective option among the three disaster recovery sites.

However, due to the fact that a cold site doesn¶t have any pre-installed equipment, it takes a lot of time to properly set it up so as to fully resume business operations. In case of a disaster, an organisation would require help from IT personnel to migrate necessary servers and make them functional in order to take on the workload of the primary site.

Hot site

A hot site is a backup facility which represents a mirrored copy of the primary production centre. A hot site is equipped with all the necessary hardware, software and network connectivity, which allows the company to perform near real-time backup or replication of the critical data.

This way the production workload can be failed over to a DR site in a few minutes or hours, thus ensuring minimal downtime and ]ero data loss. A hot site is expected to be always online and running without disruption so as to ensure data synchronisation between the sites.

It is the most expensive option among the three.

Warm site

A warm site is considered the middle ground between the cold site and the hot site. A warm site is a backup facility that has the network connectivity and the necessary hardware equipment already pre-installed.

However, a warm site cannot perform on the same level as the production centre because they are not equipped in the same way.

Therefore, a warm site has less operational capacity than the primary site. Moreover, data synchronisation between the primary and the secondary sites is performed daily or weekly, which can result in minor data loss.

A warm site is perfect for organisations which operate with less critical data and can tolerate a short period of downtime. This type of a DR site is the second most expensive option.