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Episode 3 of the EcoXpert podcast is all about the topic of security and High Availability Server protection and disaster recovery. A critical topic when talking about the internet, is the safety and above all the recovery of data that is used on a daily basis. Failure to protect these data systems and have backup and recovery systems in place, can lead to crippling and devastating consequences for individuals and business.
During this episode I was virtually joined by my co-host, Kevin Morin, the Critical Power EcoXpert Partner Program badge owner, to discuss cybersecurity and by Bipin Patel, Technical Director and Tajinder Marwah, Sales & Marketing Manager of a UK based company called OpenMinds, specialists in the field of High Availability and disaster recovery clustering in cloud, hybrid cloud, on-premise or datacenter. During the interview, we discuss how these systems can instantaneously recover systems that have crashed, been hacked or suffered data loss.
High Availability Server protection
Kevin mentions how recently the cybersecurity of traditionally considered non-critical commercial buildings and facilities (such as shopping centers and university campuses) have been deemed critical. Their electrical infrastructure and operations require maintaining a highly secure electrical system. That’s where we turn to OpenMinds experts for High Availability protection and instantaneous servers.
OpenMinds’ instantaneous server devices, based around Windows and Linux servers, are an important part of the IoT world in terms of security and safety as they aim to protect applications and data associated with them. According to Bipin, the Technical Director at the company, most systems rely on backend servers and in order to have the information readily available there must be a real time copy of the data with another server. That’s where the High Availability servers come into play. Backups happen instantaneously on the High Availability servers and are used for any type of application that requires immediate access to the data or that runs on a server. Any virtual server in the world can be supported by OpenMinds’ software with simple remote access through replication, making it so users won’t notice any background problems if they do occur.
“We are not a backup solution. This is more than a backup solution. This is being able to have immediate access to your data no matter what happens to your existing service.” – Bipin.
That type of backup is absolutely fundamental when it comes to critical facilities and to running many businesses.
Futuristic perspective
Taj explains that the biggest trend that’s happening is people and companies moving their data into the cloud. Data is currently and always will be sent to the cloud, server, or any sort of backend device. This is something that I can also relate to in my personal life because even at home on my personal computer there are backup servers where I can recover lost data from. Even though most companies are very cloud based, defense and finance companies do try to keep data internal on physical internal servers, but still all rely on backup servers to protect and recover data. All this dynamic data is critical and will always be relevant to this market because without it their systems would not work.
Any compromise to data results in a loss of revenue as it can easily halt operations, so it is very important to have the ability to recover data and any other information that could be lost. Companies such as OpenMinds reassure any type of production to keep running. Between malicious intent and unintended causes such as a server crash it is better to stay protected in these scenarios.
EcoXpert partner perspective
Instantaneous High Availability servers provide a great opportunity for EcoXperts to add that extra layer of cybersecurity to the applications that they’re offering.
Kevin has experienced that business partners typically tend to divide High Availability and disaster recovery into two topics on the Critical Power side of things. The first being the back-up of data (always owning data in secondary place if the first is compromised). The second and more important being the high availability notification services such as alarms or text messages be transferred over immediately to the backup if there is a compromise to the initial server. OpenMinds has a very interesting approach to providing both of those features together in their applications.
If you’re an EcoXpert interested in learning more about this topic visit Schneider Electric Exchange where you can find and engage in many great discussions on the topic – search “High Availability Solutions.”
To get in touch with OpenMinds and discover more about what they offer please visit their website and contact them by phone or email.
https://soundcloud.com/se-podcast/podcast-ep3-ecoxpert-by-schneider-electric
Listen to the full Episode 3 to discover more. Search “EcoXpert” on any listening app to listen or download for free and subscribe to the channel.
