The Single Best Advice We’ve Ever Heard About Disaster Recovery

Imagine that by the end of this article, you’ll be a better IT person, that’s equipped to make good decisions all because you learned about one important part of your job and why it’s so crucial.

And we’re not talking about features and benefits of disaster recovery.

We’re going to be sharing with you about the best way to craft and execute the best disaster recovery plan for your business.

The best advice for disaster recovery.

What’s the best wisdom we have for you, in your role as an IT manager, when it pertains to disaster recovery and backup of critical information?

It’s having an actionable, executable and documented strategy in preparation of when disaster strikes.

At DigiSync, we’ve found that few IT professionals have such a plan to overcome disaster. As an IT manager or the director of an IT department, you’re responsible for the data inside your organization. All data requires specific steps to make sure you data and records are backed up.

Where to start?

The first piece of wisdom we’d like to suggest begins with identifying your requirements.

Identifying these always comes before you even outline your disaster and data recovery plan. You need to consider all the types of data inside your organization and ask how they can potentially fail, before you get to the point of documenting your plan.

Once these are discussed and documented, start with building your strategy. In it you’ll need to identify different failure points, such as:

• Corrupted data and user errors.
• Complete or partial loss of servers or even your data center.
• Failure of certain types of media.
• The timeframe which to resume normal operations, from the time from actual failure.

Every possible failure point will require a different method to recover that damaged data. Each failure point will also require separate and different tactics as a part of your overall recovery strategy. As you craft your strategy, you’ll need to ask yourself additional questions like:

• How would we operate through the loss of data?
• Could we recover lost data or lost files if our servers failed, or something was destroyed through a catastrophe?
• How quickly do you need to have your systems up and running?
• Have you tested your process for roadblocks?
• Who are the key team members/resources involved? Is this recovery process documented?

With these issues and questions answered, you can now choose how you can avoid confusion when an unforeseen issue actually does happen.

Details for successful BDR.

Other items to look at when crafting your requirements documentation as a part of your backup strategy are:

• Do you have a software solution to help you achieve your goals?
• What’s your recovery software situation?
• Do you have a backup process that’s automated?
• Do you have a software tool that gives you reporting on backup activities, and a tool that gives reporting that you can actually validate?

Once you’re able to flush out some the more minor details as a part of your disaster prevention plan, you can then move forward with documenting a formal backup strategy with answers for overcoming most scenarios.

Validate, validate, validate.

Now that you feel you’ve got a realistic strategy ready, one that’s been documented you’re your requirements, you need to test it.

Why? Because doing a test is hard, but going through an actual disaster situation while not having a plan that’s been tested is even more stressful.

The goal is for the IT department inside your company is to be up and running. Whether you are involved in a large company, or small business, disaster recovery planning is complicated. There are different technologies to consider, and constant changes inside your organization like staffing shifts, technology upgrades, and new applications require periodic plan validation to make sure the recovery plan is a success.

Challenges with validating your disaster backup plan.

Before you dive in, consider the challenges that could arise in testing your plan. Some of those challenges might be:

• Effective and frequent communication and coordination.
• Connecting dependent systems with their corresponding environments.
• Proper sequencing of servers, applications, and isolating different environments.
• Replacing your host names and IP addresses.

Help you with your disaster recovery plan.

If you’re a Los Angeles-based company or organization and you’re looking for some guidance on how to be prepared for the worst IT issues possible, email us here, and we’ll help you understand how your Los Angeles business can be ready (with the help of an outsourced IT provider) for whatever disaster strikes.