Combat Disasters and Optimize
Business Operations with Content
Server Replication

In this article we take a look at how Content Server replication technology allows organizations to discover how they can apply fast, cost effective and reliable replication that will optimize their overall business operations. The challenges lie not only in understanding the context, relationships and influences with locational data, but also tackling information flow and linkages. To meet this evolving need it is crucial for organizations to understand replication and how it integrates into Content Server.

The relentless pace of business communications demands that all business units work with updated information at all times. If even one business unit operates with outdated information, the results can be both painful and expensive. As organizational changes or acquisitions occur the associated digital information must be reorganized too. In some cases this may require that information is consolidated into a single content repository. In other instances the new organization may require that the information may need to be segregated, either as a result of new security requirements or the separation of lines of business. In either case, the data must be moved and made available with minimal disruption to the new organization(s).

Replication of information is critical to businesses, which must maintain uninterrupted network availability and mission-critical applications in their normal operating conditions. Every minute that networks or applications are unavailable has a very real cost associated. If replication tools are used to synchronize files, network operators can re- route users to a surviving server, and business operations can continue with minimal disruption.

So how does replication combat disasters and optimize business operations?

The first way is by allowing a business to continue operating. Every organization needs to have a plan for when a disaster hits. Since no one can predict the future we must plan for different scenarios and make sure the data is available as required. For most organizations that means backing up their data and storing it in offsite so that it can be restored to a location that survives the disaster.

This process can be quite expensive when you figure in all of the costs. Typical legacy backup investments have a lot of overhead: Disk systems, tapes, enclosures, drives, libraries, offsite tape storage, time spent managing tape and storing the data offsite, power, cooling, salaries, etc. This adds up to a major expense in most cases. If data is not easily available to move offsite such as a ship at sea, a remote mining operation or an oil platform at sea the traditional methods represent increased risk. Replication can greatly reduce these costs and reduce the risk at remote sites because the process is done automatically. The transportation, storage and maintenance costs through replication will typically be much less costly than the traditional manual, labor intensive method.

The restoration process of a replicated backup can be as simple as setting a switch to the replicated server. Instead of waiting for a lengthy restore of a new server from backups, users would seamlessly access a backup server without even knowing the primary server has gone down.

Another area where replication can optimize business operations is service-level agreements. Many organizations rely heavily on service-level agreements. When a server crashes it may affect an organizations ability to meet an SLA, especially if there are time requirements involved. Organizations using replication as their data backup approach can restore services in minutes vs. hours or days with a traditional restore and the cost savings is typically significant.

Finally, replication can greatly enhance an organization’s ability to meet compliance, legal precedents, and corporate governance rules. Organizations keep data around as a matter of internal policy or corporate governance. There are also many regulations, such as Sarbanes Oxley, that dictate retention policies. Trying to meet these requirements with a traditional tape backup system can get very expensive and complex depending on how many systems you have and how long you are required to maintain data. Replication can greatly simplify this process by storing data instantly in a method that is easy to retrieve. Consider the comparison of searching through years of tape or disk vs. searching a Content Server site containing archived data.

Syntergy has recently seen quite a large interest in the Replicator product because it provides so much efficiency in content management. To see if it is a good fit for your organization we encourage you to contact Syntergy at info@syntergy.com or visit our website at https://www.syntergy.com.

We also recommend that you attend our upcoming OpenText Webinar: Top 5 Reasons Organizations Use Content Server Replication to see why Replicator is such a popular add-on module for OpenText Content Server. You will see how organizations are implementing replication for uninterrupted Content Server access during server outages, upgrades and migrations as well as for improved performance, availability and security by deploying a distributed Content Server architecture. The webinar will demonstrate how replication is an import piece of a Content Server solution, whether a traditional or cloud-based implementation.

Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Time: 11:00 A.M. - Noon EST / 8:00 A.M. - 9:00 A.M. PDT