Resources > Articles > Disaster Recovery: Keeping It Real!
Disaster Recovery: Keeping It Real!
by Caroline Moncur
This needs to be stated upfront: Disaster Recovery is a very dull topic. Anybody who enjoys discussing Disaster Recovery must have a fantastic DR solution in place and want to share their success. This article is not addressing those people and organizations; these comments are for the majority of the population who think of love in Spring and not of hurricanes!
For all these people, the first thing to know is that Disaster Recovery refers to your organisation's IT systems recovery. Business Continuity is the more current term which encompasses recovery of your systems as well as recovery of business processes and functions.
If your organization does not have anything or very little in place in the way of a recovery strategy, the best place to start is by focusing on Disaster Recovery. If you haven't found the time or the funds to implement the capability to recover your data, the chances of you being able to find far more time and funds to develop and implement a Business Continuity Plan are negligible. So, focus on what is most important: your data. Without this, your ability to operate will be severely limited.
So, to keep things quite real, these are the steps that all organizations can cost-effectively and simply follow to develop some capability to recover from a disaster. These steps will not take you to the equivalent of a Disaster Recovery utopia; they will however provide you with the foundation to build on when the gods smile upon you and grant you an excess of funds and time!
Data Protection
Determine your business' most critical application. Protect this application and ensure you can restore it again if you lose your IT systems. Given that the most common natural disasters in the Bahamas are hurricanes, get this data out of your building and out of harm's way.
There are many solutions that can protect your data. In general, the faster they can get you up and running, the more costly they are. In determining your budget, you may like to calculate how much downtime will cost you in terms of both productivity and revenue. There are calculations available on any DR website or you may like to get the auditors in. You can then make a decision as to which solution would be the most cost-effective for you. For example, a state of the art real-time data replication solution could be relatively inexpensive given the cost of downtime. For other businesses, the relatively slow recovery time of tape backup will be sufficient if their cost of down time is minimal.
There are solutions to suit every budget and requirement and it is just a matter of understanding and assessing the options.
Critical Operations
Identify the part of the business that you could not do without. Put in place a brief plan to get this business division up and running quickly. You can think creatively about different solutions to this: it does not have to be by the book. The important point is to have a plan in place as arrangements have to be made in advance. People
Identify the people who will lead/coordinate these activities in a crisis.
Telecommunications
Ensure you can divert incoming telephone calls or at least be able to provide an emergency holding message.
Documentation
Keep copies of essential documentation in an offsite location. Documentation should include staff contact details, asset inventory and insurance information.
Test
Test and review these steps twice a year to make sure they are all working!
All insurance costs money and Disaster Recovery is no exception. It is a "grudge" purchase that you are only ever grateful that you made when you need it! By keeping Disaster Recovery simple, you can keep your costs and effort to a minimum.
To provide feedback on this column, please email makingITwork@providencetg.com
About the Author:
Ms Caroline Moncur is Manager, Business Development at Providence Technology Group. Ms Moncur has over ten year's business development experience, primarily within the Information Technology industry. Providence Technology Group is one of the Bahamas' leading IT firms, specializing in Networking Solutions, Consulting & Advisory Services and Software Solutions.
