Carol: Hi, I’m with Tanya Lee. She’s the team lead of our proactive team at MIS Solutions. And lately, we’ve been talking a lot about backup and disaster recovery, and the business-critical role that BDR plays in business continuity. We’ve said this before, that it’s important to periodically test your backups to ensure that they can be recovered in the event of a real crisis, whether that be a cyber attack, accidental data loss, hardware failure, a software failure, or a natural disaster. So traditionally when performing a test restore, managed service providers spin up an identical network with an identical firewall, identical servers, and identical file names within the live production environment. And this presents a unique challenge for MSPs and can possibly cause unintentional problems for the client.
When you’ve got two identical networks living within the same space, there’s always a chance of cross interference between the original production environment and the test restore. Tania, I want you to tell us, what your team has done to address this challenge.
Tania: So firstly, how the BDR team, put systems in place to assist and accommodate this possible cross contamination or interference between original production and environment test restores is we actually have created an identical test restore environment.
Now, what this basically entails is that it’s an isolated environment. It has no communication to the outside world. No chance of cross-contamination between environments so we could run simultaneously. So the two environments of the same environment so the client’s environment can be in a live production and replicated in a post off environment that does not impact the live environment.
Carol: Tania, is it, is this common practice? Do most managed service providers, have separate test restore environments?
Tania: I do believe that this is unique to MIS, that we have our own individual isolated test environment.
MIS is looking at, improving the services that we give to our clients to ensure and put the client’s mind at ease that we have got their best interest at heart.
Carol: Okay. And we did this primarily for the test restores that we do for our clients, but having a separate restore environment like this would also be ideal, I would imagine, in the event of a real disaster recovery scenario. Is that correct?
Tania: Yes, of course. By having the separate environment, basically this gives us the opportunity to also assist if there is, for example, a cyber incident and the investigation is required for the insurance companies, the cyber insurance companies, what we would want to do is to be able to take the infected environment, move it over to the isolated environment and at the same time restore a full environment so that the client can get up and running as quickly as possible.
But we do not remove, the infected environment if we’re talking cyber security incidents and we are able to do a full investigation and give reports and audits accordingly.
Carol: Okay. Okay. let’s talk a little bit about the test restores. So how often are they done and what is included in a test restore?
Tania: Basically, we do a test restore once a year. So annually for clients, unless it is requested to do it more frequently, but ideally, it’s annually that a test restore is done. So basically, what this would entail is we would be doing a full restore of the client’s environment and thereafter basically supply and provide the reporting, which would give the idea a clear indication to the client as to how long it would take for MIS to get the environment up and running and working as quickly as possible.
Carol: Okay. And how long does that usually take to get a, an environment up and running?
Tania: We definitely do commit to a 24-hour turnaround time. This entails basically the whole environment getting spun up at the same time. So, it is all dependent, but we do aim to have 24-hour period.
Carol: So, Tania, walk us through the process of a test restore.
Tania: Okay. So basically, the BDR team will go ahead and do preparation a few days before. And while we’re doing preparations, we place documentation throughout the client’s environment with a date stamp and a screenshot taken of the location where the file has been stored.
Once the preparation has been done, backups are obviously run on a nightly schedule. And then what we’ll do is once the restore has completed, We would then log into each server, navigate to the relevant location of the documentation that the BDR team had placed there previously, and we would take additional screenshots to prove date, time backup is, backup completed successfully, the date is available, and we would then provide that with a full report.
Carol: Okay, and what is included in this report?
Tania: In the report, basically what is listed there besides the document with all the screenshots from before and after the restore, we have what time the restore was started per server, we have what time the restore ended per server, so the time period it took to get the server up and running, as well as how long it would take to restore the client’s full environment, so we give an indication per server event.
And then the total amount of time, which would be allocated in a full restore in a case of a disaster recovery.
Carol: All right. So, at the end of the day, a test restore will provide evidence to the client in the event that there was an actual disaster, we’re able to restore the systems, and the data from backup and we’re able to preserve forensic evidence and get them back to work quickly.
Tania: Yes, that is 100-percent correct. That is the goal.
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