Workstations - Disaster Recoverys Untouched Opportunity

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MAX Insight

Whitepaper

Workstations: Disaster Recovery’s
untouched opportunity
By Nick Cavalancia

Table of Contents

What do you consider a disaster?

3

What’s in a workstation?

4

Recovering the workstation: Let me count the ways

5

Disasters: Your opportunity in the cloud

7

Conclusion

8

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Workstations: Disaster Recovery’s Untouched Opportunity | 2

What do you consider a disaster?

Often, the mention of Disaster Recovery produces thoughts of
monsoons and hurricanes, complete chaos, no power, etc. In
reality, your customer defines it simply as an event that creates an
inability for the business to function. Disasters come in many
shapes and sizes – the natural disasters we all think about, but also
chemical spills, building fires, broken water pipes, and, on a much
smaller scale, a virus-infested server.
When you ask a company about their IT disaster recovery plans, you’ll inevitably hear about backups of data
and servers, use of server virtualization, even hot or cold disaster sites. But rarely do you hear about
workstations. And that’s odd, because while it’s great that a company can get all their IT infrastructure back up
and running, but if there are no client machines to connect to the infrastructure, what good is it?
At best, workstations are an afterthought. But the reality is without them, a business simply cannot operate.
Even MSPs are guilty of being ill-prepared when it comes to workstations. Many of you may lean back on the
“we have a workstation image” line of thinking, but it’s worth considering that, while an image may serve as
the basis for a workstation, a given machine usually has been modified from the image by either managed
changes, such as Group Policies, scripts, manual updates, etc. or by unmanaged changes – a.k.a., the user of
that workstation customizing it to their liking. For a user to be productive, they need a workstation recovered
to as close to the last known state as is possible.
The issue for MSPs really comes down to what your SLA dictates you need to provide in the wake of a disaster
as it pertains to workstations. It is merely a simple image or are you supposed to reestablish each workstation
back to a place where the user can be productive? If it’s more the latter, the image simply won’t cut it. And, for
the MSP, that’s actually a good thing – as you will see in this whitepaper, it means you have an opportunity to
make more revenue while providing better service for your customers.
The goal of this whitepaper is to introduce you to Cloud-based backup and recovery as your most
comprehensive, most reliable, highest available, and fastest means to recover workstations and conveying the
value to your customers. We’ll do so by establishing what needs to be recovered, discussing the ways you can
recover a complete workstation (with pros and cons of each), and covering when you will need to recover.

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What’s in a workstation?

When considering the recovery of a workstation, let’s start by thinking of it in three parts:
Operating System
Applications
Personal Settings
Each of these parts is necessary to, in sum total, create a secure and productive working environment for the
user.
The OS is the obvious winner of the “Most Critical” award. Recovery needs to consider not just the basic OS,
but the current version of the OS, including patches and updates. That means you have to hit a constantly
moving target. Also, different parts of a customer’s business may require different OSes to accommodate
application, security or accessibility requirements, so you’ll need to consider, in extreme disaster cases, the
recovering more than one type of OS.
Applications are in a similar situation. As business needs change, versions of applications are updated,
applications are replaced with competitors, and no two departments use all the same applications. One part
of accounting may be using version11 of the accounting app because they haven’t been upgraded like the
other half that are on version 12.
Every workstation OS and the corresponding specific applications need to be considered; it’s more than just
installing Office.
Personal Settings are a bit of a conundrum – how much value should you place on them? Can users work
efficiently and effectively without them or do they need their exact old environment to function? Consider
the value of a single shortcut, say, on the desktop of a Windows 7 machine (the most prominent OS in use at
the time of this paper’s writing). What’s it worth to the customer (and, therefore, is it worth recovering)? Take
this example about a shortcut to heart to see the value in every part of personal settings:
A user’s Windows 7 machine is recovered and the icon for Microsoft Word that used to be on their desktop is
no longer there. So they call the helpdesk and say “My Word got uninstalled.” The helpdesk technician asks
them to find it in the Start Menu (it’s there, of course), then proceeds to ensure it’s installed via the Control
Panel. Then it dawns on them “oh… they mean the shortcut is missing!” The technician decides to help them
create a new shortcut to Word. “Would you right click your desktop, point to New and choose Shortcut?” to
which the user responds “I did and nothing happened.” “Are you right or left-clicking?”
The story could keep going on, but even this much helps make the point that something so seemingly
insignificant as a shortcut has now taken up about 10 minutes of two people’s time in your customer’s
organization. What’s that worth? Now apply this example to drive mappings, printers, application settings,
saved passwords in a web browser, and more. Each of these small parts of the overall user workspace will add
up to a lot of lost time and productivity if not recovered.
It’s safe to say, you need to recover personal settings.

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Recovering the workstation: Let me count the ways

This is the point when the conversation usually turns to talking about using images.
MSPs like you are usually big on standardization, which is perfect for images. Or is it? The problem with using
images – even those that are standardized – is an image meets the business needs at the time it was created
and not necessarily today. Business and security needs change, which results in patches and updates being
applied. Users are constantly customizing their personal settings, moving farther and farther away from the
standard.
So, if you want to stick to your guns about imaging, you’ll be pushing images of machines down, then
requiring them to update, then need to install or update applications, and then somehow push out a
(presumably) backed up copy of personal settings. This doesn’t sound like the fast and effective way for an
MSP to recover workstations and make money doing it.
Virtualization is another possibility. Many of you may mandate servers be virtualized for easier recovery,
monitoring and management, so building a workstation farm could be a possibility. If this idea resonates with
you, it would stand to reason that you wouldn’t be creating exact duplicates of each and every workstation
(complete with personal settings) but, instead, creating a standard virtual image for accounting, sales,
marketing, etc. Applications would need to be installed, personal settings would likely be largely dismissed,
and users would need a hardware or software-based thin client to access the virtual workstation.
To be effective, this would need to be lying in wait or you’ll be investing as much time as imaging in addition
to the incurred hardware and software costs to setup the virtualization in the first place.
Lastly, there’s cloud-based backup. With a virtually unlimited storage capacity, block-level backups for small
daily transmission sizes and the potential for a hybrid implementation that includes on-premise backups for
fast (and redundant) restores, cloud backup presents itself as a viable method of backing up every
workstation.
Restores would comprehensively put each workstation back into its unique last known state, including OS,
applications and personal settings.
Table 1 shows a number of ways you could recover Workstations after a disaster.
RECOVERY
RATING
4 BEST
2 GOOD
0 POOR

RECOVERY
METHOD

IMAGING

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RECURRING
REVENUE?

OS

4

Applications

2

Personal
Settings

0

No

RECOVERY
TESTING
FEES?
Yes

PROS

Standardized
images to lower
support times
Multiple machines
can be imaged
simultaneously

CONS

Multiple OSes require
separate images
Base images won’t
include OS updates &
patches
Won’t address specific

Workstations: Disaster Recovery’s Untouched Opportunity | 5

application needs
Won’t recover personal
settings
Possibly
OS

4

Applications

2

Personal
Settings

0

No

Fastest way to get
the customer
working IF already
setup
Quickly scalable
solution

Requires additional
server hardware and
some kind of thin client
Same multiple OS issue
as imaging
Probably have one
environment for
multiple clients so
applications won’t be
setup

VIRTUALIZATION

No personal settings
recovered
You still need to
recover each physical
workstation (unless you
move the customer to
virtualized
workstations)
OS

4

Applications

4

Personal
Settings

Yes

Yes

4

HYBRID
CLOUD
RECOVERY

Can singularly
create an exact
copy of each
workstation

Local storage only
scales with additional
hardware at time of
backup

Block-level
changes for
speedy backups
Infinitely scalable
Can be used for
bare-metal
recovery
Completely
restores a
workstation back
to its last known
state

Table 1: Comparing the pros and cons of each method of recovering workstations

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Disasters: Your opportunity in the cloud

Once you’ve identified customers that are concerned with recovering from any kind of disaster (which is every
one of them), you now have an opportunity to include workstations and provide that recovery service in a
way that benefits both the customer and you.
Hybrid cloud backup and recovery of workstations provides the highest level of reliability and availability as
part of your solution. With world-class data centers throughout the world providing multiple levels of
redundancy and the highest encryption available, your customer can rest assured that what is backed up is
secure and available at a moment’s notice.
The obvious Achilles heel of the cloud side of backup and recovery is the customer’s Internet connection – if
it’s too small or down, the conversation about restoring from the cloud comes to a screeching halt. Which is
why hybrid cloud backup and recovery is the only viable way to make the cloud work in this situation. By
utilizing an on-premise NAS device (provided by you or the customer) and a unified backup solution that
manages both local and cloud-based storage, you now can offer the speed of an on-premise solution with
the reliability, redundancy and availability of a cloud-based solution.
It’s not just the customer; there are benefits for the MSP as well. Unlike imaging, which is a one-time service,
cloud backup and recovery creates a few sources of revenue:
Monthly recurring storage fees – priced per GB, the more the customer wants to put in the cloud, the
more revenue for the MSP.
Yearly or Quarterly recovery testing fees – depending on the SLA with the customer, you will need to
be testing recoveries from both local and cloud-based storage to ensure response times are accurate.
Recovery Planning fees – This one applies, regardless of whether you choose the cloud as your recovery
method. If you’re going to be responsible for anything from a single workstation to all of them, you’ll need
to build the workstation recovery plan and integrate it into your recovery plans for servers and the
network.
Recovery fees – It’s important to also note that a hybrid cloud backup provides you with the most
automated (read: least amount of manual work) method of recovering workstations, making this the most
cost-effective way for your business to enter the workstation recovery market and make the most money
doing so!

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Conclusion

As it turns out, disasters are great for business! Yours, that is.
And it’s not just your business that benefits; your business relationship with your customers also improves. By
offering a comprehensive disaster recovery solution to your customers, you are providing them with a better
product that keeps their business running while increasing your revenue. There’s nothing more solidifying in a
business relationship than you having their back.
Workstations are the obvious red-headed stepchild of disaster recovery. They need to be a part of the plan to
effectively get a business running again. You’ll need to convince your customers of the need to include them,
the challenges of users being effective with only a base environment instead of their workstation, and the
benefits of completely getting all of the business back to a pre-disaster state.
Once you’ve cleared this hurdle with your customers, it’s obvious hybrid cloud backup and recovery is the
best option not only for your customer (who benefits from the most reliable, secure and fast recovery method
available), but also for you, by increasing your recurring fees, lowering labor costs and providing the highest
level of service.

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