Improving service continuity

Abstract

Data centers provide highly-scalable and reliable computing for enterprise services such as web hosting, email, applications, and file storage. Because they integrate a range of different systems, data center administration is a complex process. Managing the risk of IT disaster is especially difficult. Layers of interrelated infrastructure multiply the effect of system malfunctions. Seemingly-small problems can turn into major disasters and take entire data centers offline. To cope with the myriad risks, this research develops a matrix of IT disaster prevention and mitigation techniques for data centers. The matrix is organized along two dimensions: attributes of data center infrastructure and elements of the IT disaster recovery process. It includes 134 specific techniques which were clustered into 49 cells within the matrix. An expert panel assessed the validity of the matrix and ranked the techniques within each cell. The result is a comprehensive tool for improving the resilience of data centers.