Complying with Continuity of Operation

(COOP) Plans Using Disk
Imaging

Solutions
Complying with Continuity of Operation (COOP) Plans Using
Disk
Imaging Solutions

In This Paper
Excutive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
The State of COOP Planning . . . . . . . . . . . .3
The Challenge of Complying with COOP . . . .4
Using Disk Imaging to Comply with COOP . .4
Acronis True Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Customer Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Executive Summary
Recent natural disasters such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, just four
years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, have brought into sharp
relief the need for contingency planning. Moreover, fears of an avian flu epidemic
have kept organizations on edge and forced many to confront the inadequacy of
the of their own disaster plans.
The Federal government is particularly concerned. Federal agencies are under
increasing scrutiny to define and test so
called continuity of operation (COOP) and
continuity of government (COG) plans. In many cases, disk imaging can be an
integral part of these plans. This paper explains COOP and suggests the role that
imaging can play in government preparedness.

The State of COOP Planning

Although COOP requirements are well understood, compliance is far from
universal. A survey of 533 IT professionals in government by Larstan Business TABLE 1. THE COST
OF DOWNTIME
Reports found that, while about 80% of respondents agreed that COOP is integral
$1M in lost revenue per
to technology purchases and upgrade planning, a third believe their agencies have hour on average
not implemented a COOP plan. More than half of the respondents believe that the
agencies with which they collaborate don't have a COOP plan in place at all. This is
the case even though COOP is one of the top pressing concerns for 2006 as
shown in Figure 1.

Source: IT Performance
Engineering &
Measurement Strategies:
Quantifying Performance
Loss, Meta Group

In 2004, the Office of Management and Budget reviewed COOP plans across the
Federal government and found that no agency was complying fully with the FEMA
guidelines. The 2005 annual security report card from the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Government Reform gave the U.S. government an
overall grade of D+ for the second year in information security, with failing grades
to the departments of Homeland Security, State and Defense. The committee
specifically cited contingency planning as an area of concern.

3
Complying with Continuity of Operation (COOP) Plans Using
Disk
Imaging Solutions

Moreover, while most state and local government agencies aren't required to maintain COOP
plans, many are now looking to the Federal government for guidance. Pennsylvania, Washington,
Virginia and Florida are among the states that now mandate or strongly encourage state
agencies to create COOP plans. FEMA is providing guidance on Federal government best
practices to aid agencies in those states with disaster planning.

The Challenge of Complying with COOP

Agency officials say the biggest problem of compliance with COOP is lack of funding. From an IT
perspective, the federal guidelines require agencies to give their people access to a local area
network, vital records, critical information systems and data, and internal and external e
mail
and archives. "Agencies should strongly consider multiple redundant media for storage of idle
records," the guidelines advise.
Cost concerns, however, limit the practicality of those solutions. Backup sites and redundant
equipment are expensive to procure and maintain. Creating and implementing a COOP plan can
be time
consuming and expensive and gets lower priority than activities that generate more
visible results. The process involves extensive analysis of an agency's operations and contingency
plans for every critical function. In addition, the plan should be rehearsed annually and periodically
reviewed and updated, according to Federal guidelines.
Fortunately, agencies have considerable latitude in choosing how to design their own plans and
some creative approaches to the problem are being formulated. For example, agencies are
encouraged to cooperate to share facilities and equipment, thus providing a kind of virtual "hot
site" backup without the cost of engaging a commercial service provider.
Agencies are also increasingly looking at telework arrangements as a cost effective approach to
COOP planning. Federal Computer Week recently cited a program at the Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration. The agency issues laptop PCs to every employee, along with
procedures for continuing operations remotely if agency offices are inaccessible. The plan has the
dual benefit of reducing office expenses while providing COOP compliance.

Using Disk Imaging to Comply with COOP

One element that is often overlooked in contingency planning is the importance of backing up
applications. Data protection naturally gets top priority. However, the time and manpower
required to restore a user's desktop or server to a steady state can be significant, often
exceeding six hours for just a single PC. An operating system install may take 45 minutes or
more and as many as a dozen applications may be needed for the user to be productive.
That's a productivity drain under the best of circumstances. In a crisis environment in which
dozens or hundreds of user computers must be recovered within a twelve
hour window, it can
render an organization's COOP plan dead on arrival.
Tape backup is the most common way to back up a server or client system. But restoring from
tape is slow and error
prone. Some users have reported failure rates as high as 60% for
workstation restores. Tapes are also prone to deterioration or simply getting mislabeled or lost.
And performing an incremental restore from tape can be unacceptably slow.
New options are emerging. In recent years, the dramatic declines in the cost of disk storage have
made this storage media an increasingly attractive alternative to tape. When combined with a
disk imaging solution it provides a simple, effective way to restore a complete system. A disk
image creates a snapshot of the PC or server operating environment
including operating
system, applications and data
and stores it in a hard disk partition. The system can then be
restored to a full working state in a matter of just minutes.
The images include all user settings, passwords, bookmarks, templates and configuration
options, as displayed in Figure 2. It's just like reverting to an earlier point in time. Imaging
software allows "snapshot" images to be taken on a scheduled basis so that users can roll back
to a version of their operating environment from any point in time. They can even perform an
incremental restore. This allows an earlier image of applications, for example, to be used with
more current backed
up data.

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In a crisis situation, disk imaging can be a life
saver. Because a disk
based solution creates a
backup at the sector level, it can backup everything on the drive, including both user

accessible data as well as open Windows files
system files, the master boot record (MBR),
partition tables and any partition
based boot records
that traditional file
based backup
methods overlook. In addition to cutting hours of time out of the restore process, disk imaging
eliminates the need for users to go through multiple steps to restore a system, such as
reinstalling the operating system, drivers, updates, configuration files, and the data, and
multiple reboots in between; that’s because all of this information is contained in the image.
Figure 3 provides a comparison of the steps and time required to backup and perform a bare

metal restore with a disk
based solution versus a file
based solution. New technology even
enables images to be stored centrally on a server and downloaded to individual workstations
as needed.

Acronis True Image

The Acronis True Image family of disaster recovery and disk imaging software is an award

winning solution for this new category of enterprise backup and restore. With Acronis True
Image Workstation, users can image an entire disk or just selected files and folders on any
networked system running a desktop version of Windows. After a crash, the user has the
option of performing a bare metal restore or restoring only selected files and folders.

5
Using Acronis Universal Restore, a user can even restore an image created on one
computer to a completely different machine or into a virtual machine. And Acronis
Snap Restore allows work to continue while the restore process is underway.
The Acronis True Image Server family provides similar functionality for Windows and
Linux servers. Its exclusive Acronis Drive Snapshot technology can create backups
without interrupting critical server operations. The cost of server downtime can be
almost incalculable in some situations. Disk imaging provides the fastest and most
reliable technology for continuing operations.

Customer Case Study

Acronis True Image helped the Hardee County Emergency Management Department
to continue operations in the aftermath of Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne in
August, 2004 "Acronis True Image Server was a godsend" said Don Faulkner, Hardee
County IT Specialist.
Phones, cell phones, satellite, and radio communication systems were completely
wiped away by Hurricane Charley. The only form of communication remaining was
email due to the T1 line that was running with a backup generator.
"At one point even email communication was at risk because the generator running
our server failed, causing the server to crash," said Faulkner. "However, we were able
to successfully restore the entire server in 8 minutes using the most recent Acronis
image of the server. If we had used our tape
based system, a recovery would have
taken days".
When Frances slammed into Florida a couple of weeks later, Acronis True Image
Workstation was used to roll out 10 laptops to replace desktops lost in that storm.
"The laptops were bare and needed the operating system and all applications
installed," Faulkner said. "Preparing the first laptop took approximately three hours.
However, with Acronis True Image Workstation, I was able to deploy all of the
remaining nine laptops in just 22 minutes. Acronis True Image saved us once again."

Conclusion
With the cost of disk storage continuing to plummet
some experts believe it
will soon approach the cost of tape
disk imaging deserves careful
consideration as an inexpensive and easy
to
use component of a contingency
plan. With COOP awareness increasing in government agencies at all levels,
Acronis True Image may be the shortcut to compliance that IT organizations
need.

To find out more about Acronis True Image products: For OEM inquiries:
Call +1 877 669
9749 Call +1 650 875
7593
E
mail sales@acronis.com E
mail oem@acronis.com

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2006 Acronis, Inc. All rights reserved. “Acronis”, "Acronis Compute with Confidence", “Secure
Zone”, “Recovery Manager”, “Snap Restore” and the Acronis logo are trademarks of Acronis, Inc. Windows is a
registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other names
mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Printed in USA.