A solid disaster recovery strategy is crucial to protecting your organization's future in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency that causes downtime. In this guide, we've compiled our best resources to ensure that your disaster recovery (DR) plan is complete, up to date and appropriate for your company's needs. First, we cover the basics of disaster recovery planning and testing, with expert advice on planning tools, meeting your recovery time objectives, incorporating change management and DR, and more. Next, we delve into the specifics of developing a disaster recovery strategy, including site selection, colocation facilities, DR consultants and the latest backup technologies. Finally, we cover the growing trend of incorporating virtualization into disaster recovery and business continuity planning.
TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Disaster recovery planning basics II. Disaster recovery testing III. Working with disaster recovery service providers IV. DR backup and replication technologies V. Disaster recovery and virtualization
I. Disaster recovery planning basics
Make IT change management part of your disaster recovery plan Improving IT process maturity by implementing the IT Infrasturcture LIbrary (ITIL) and change management strategies can help prevent data center downtime. But taking shortcuts and skipping steps are common causes of data center disasters.
Data center disaster recovery considerations checklist There are many factors to take into consideration before your disaster recovery plan can be successfully implemented. DR expert Bill Peldzus offers a checklist to ensure your organization's bases are covered.
Data growth: The worst enemy of your recovery time objective Data growth can render your current DR plan ineffective and prevent you from meeting recovery time objectives (RTOs). Get a handle on your RTOs with better data management policies and technologies like data deduplication and storage tiering.
How many data centers are sufficient for disaster recovery? Two, three, or more? IT departments are facing pressure to reduce costs and increase efficiency while at the same time ensure disaster preparedness. By performing an business impact analysis that determines recovery time and recovery point objectives, you can determine how many data centers are necessary for your DR plan.
Top disaster recovery budget wasters Is your organization's disaster recovery plan eating up your budget? An expert discusses common DR budget wasters, incluing failure to maintain the plan, not deploying virtualization, lack of CEO involvement and more.
II. Disaster recovery testing
Is your disaster recovery plan out of date? If your DR plan is merely an afterthought, it will become out of date quickly. To stay current, tie your plan to your configuration management process, test regularly and track your RTO trends.
Ten reasons why your DR plan could be in trouble Are your disaster recovery goals realisitc? Have you tested it end to end? Is the entire business invested in the plan, or just IT? These are just a few factors that can make or break your DR plan.
American Fidelity shows how disaster recovery testing gets done In this interview we talk with Phil Larson of American Fidelity Assurance Company about how the organization formed its disaster recovery and business continuity strategy, which involves comprehensive testing twice a year, on a tight budget.
III. Working with disaster recovery service providers
Using carrier colocation in your data center disaster recovery plan Using carrier colocation for disaster recovery offers many benefits, including well-hardened facilities, strategic locations, efficient means of communication and quick response times. In this tip, a DR expert discusses how one colocation company survived a serious disaster and how investing in carrier colcation can be a smart move for your organization.
Business continuity planning consultants: Are they worth the money? If your organization lacks staff members with sufficient experience in business continuity planning (BCP), you need to hire an outside BCP consultancy firm. However, not all BCP firms are created equal. Our expert outlines what you should look for to ensure that you hire the right firm to fit your business needs.
Disaster recovery sites: How to choose the correct location There's no one-size-fits-all answer to choosing how close to place an alternative data center site. An expert reccomends carefully evaluating your disaster risk, documenting how a potential site coincides with your business needs and ensuring that the decision makers have all the facts to take into consideration.
IV. DR backup and replication technologies
Tape library trends for disaster recovery A tape library system is key to a strong data center disaster recovery plan and can be a cost-effective recovery option. An expert discusses the latest tape library trends in this tip.
The role of tape in disaster recovery Despite the increased popularity of other forms of data backup, tape backup still has a valuable place in a disaster recovery plan. In this interview, also available as and MP3, an expert answers common questions about tape backup and DR.
Disaster recovery replication FAQ Many data centers are addressing tighter RTOs with replication technologies. W. Curtis Preston, Vice President of Data Protection Services at GlassHouse Technologies, answers frequently asked questions about replication in a disaster recovery plan.
Data backup and recovery technology tutorials Learn all you need to know about backup and recovery technologies, including tape libraries, disk backup, cloud services, data deduplication and more, with these tutorials.
V. Disaster recovery and virtualization
The role of virtualization in data center disaster recovery You're likely already using virtualization somewhere in your data center. But did you know that virtualization technology can also be a solid addition to your disaster recovery and business continuity plan? An expert discusses the DR benefits that virtualization can bring to the table, including quicker recovery time, easier recovery at a DR site with virtual machine disk formats and more.
Avoiding disaster recovery pitfalls in VMware and Linux: Rejecting default settings If your data center runs Linux in a VMware environment, it's important to plan for your specific business needs and not simply accept the default settings, which are designed for the simplest scenarios. By changing the default settings according to your system's requirements, you can avoid disaster recovery complications.
How server virtualization benefits disaster recovery Business continuity expert Paul Kirvan discusses which server virtualization technologies are best for DR as well as how they can improve recovery times, help with failover and more.
Using P2V backup and restore in a disaster recovery strategy A physical-to-virtual disaster recovery plan can take advantage of physical servers that aren't good candidates for virtualization and potentially save the day in the event of a disaster. In this tip, an expert explains how to schedule regular P2V conversions of "bad apple" physical servers and discusses the tools needed for the process.
TechTarget provides technology professionals with the information they need to perform their jobs - from developing strategy, to making cost-effective purchase decisions and managing their organizations' technology projects - with its network of technology-specific websites, events and online magazines.
