Disaster Recovery Articles
Disaster Recovery Plan
If an unforeseen disaster devastated your IT infrastructure, would your organization be able to recover?
If you're not sure, it's imperative that you create a thorough disaster recovery plan.
A disaster recovery plan defines the policies and procedures you will undertake to recover from a disaster.
As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This is especially true when there is a disaster and you are unprepared. Literally, disaster can cause business failure. It has in the past and will continue to do so in the future…until businesses get serious about being prepared.
The typical first step in creating a disaster recovery plan is risk analysis (what's at stake if you lose access to your data and applications?). This determines your budget. Spend more if you have a lot to lose. It's not uncommon to spend 2% to 8% of your IT budget on disaster recovery tools.
Now comes the hard part. You need to purchase disaster recovery services and solutions from vendors. This is not the time to reinvent the wheel!
There are a zillion choices, everything from magnetic tape backups to remote managed business continuity services.
Interestingly, even if your business is small, the market has evolved to the point where you can affordably outsource your IT data backup and recovery plans to a full-service provider who will install hardware at your site and then manage remote data backups and restorations for you. They'll even do much more than that.
Once you have your solution identified and purchased, don't stop there. It's very important to document the processes and procedures you will take to regain access to your applications and data. Then, run a series of disaster test scenarios to make sure that everything works as promised and as documented.
Remember, disaster recovery plans should not be procrastinated. Disaster can happen at any time. (It usually happens right after you start thinking about writing a disaster recovery plan but before you actually get it done.)
When it comes to disaster recovery plans, the investment is well worth the effort. An ounce of prevention in this case is worth many, many pounds of cure.
