How Virtualization Is Helping To Improve Disaster Recovery

Virtualization is changing both the business continuity and disaster recovery business and in many cases in a positive way. For instance with the entrance of Site Recovery Manager from VMware businesses can achieve what was once a very daunting task, backing up their critical data to an offsite or secondary location.

Taking into account that in the past it was necessary to purchase large amounts of hardware, not just for the main data center, but for the secondary fail-over site where the data is backed-up to.

This all added to increased costs of disaster recovery programs, and in many cases these solutions were out of reach for many companies due to the cost of additional electricity, hardware, and space.

With the help of server virtualization, and the added benefit of VMware’s Site Recovery Manager, many businesses are seeing an instant cost savings and ROI. They achieved this by utilizing virtualization to reduce the number of physical servers needed to run their business applications.

Almost instantly businesses found they had the hardware they needed to implement an offsite recovery system in a secondary location once they had reduced their need for as many physical servers.

The other added benefit to virtualization is the capability to test recovery plans, and recovery systems without affecting the production environment. In other words, no more costly down time for your systems while you are testing.

Here is a document on improving business continuity by utilizing VMware virtualization.

If you would like more information on business continuity or disaster recovery for your business please contact me here.

Iranian Earthqauke May Have Been Nuclear Test

DOD Priscilla Test Photo

According to a newspaper report this weekends 5.0 Magnitude earthquake in southern Iran, may have actually been a nuclear test.

This report would also put the Iranians well ahead of the projected three month date of developing a weapon according to recent intelligence reports. But as we all know intelligence reports are not always spot on.

Questions remain, such as is this report accurate, though I have my own doubts to the validity of the report. If this is true however, how much left over material do they have to develop more weapons? How many weapons do they now have?

Of course with the help they have received from the Russians they may well be ahead of the game and are either very close to obtaining the weapon or may already secretly have several weapons.

One thing however holds true no matter if they already have the weapon, or will develop one in the near future, they will have to test it to show the West they have it for certain.

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Source 3 -- to show that earthquake occurred.
Source 4 -- second earthquake source.

United States Expects New Bin Laden Video Prior To Election

According to an ABC exclusive report several top U.S. Officials are expecting the release of a new video from Bin Laden just prior to the election. Though they also say there is no current hard evidence of such a message as yet, they are expecting one.

The report also cautioned against such speculation, suggesting that bin Laden is most concerned about his own safety at the moment, and might increasingly fear for his life.

We shall see in the next few days if it happens.

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Jellyfish Cause Shut Down of CA Nuclear Reactor

The nuclear reactor at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant had to be shut down Tuesday evening after a large swarm of jellyfish clogged the cooling water intake screens.

The jellyfish also caused a second reactor at the site to be powered down by 50% as well.

According to the report divers inspected the water intake screens for damage. It was reported that no damage was found by the divers, but it was also reported that it would be some time before the plant was fully operational again.

According to PG&E the plant provides power to more than 3.0 million northern and central California homes.

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Bees Injure 70 Year Old Woman, Kill Three Dogs

Bees, that made their home on the shutters of a vacant house in Woodbine, FL have killed three dogs and sent a woman to the hospital.

Palm Beach County Animal Control contained and removed the bees, tests are being done to determine whether the bees were Africanized "killer" bees.

50 pounds of honey comb was also removed from the property.

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