Disasters can strike any business. They can inflict serious financial losses and even shut an organization down for good. Surviving one requires planning.

Contents [hide]

• 1 How prepared do you need to be?
• 2 Devising a recovery plan
• 3 Offsite backup
• 4 Restoration
  
  4.1 Cloud failover
  
  
• 5 Recovery testing
• 6 People issues
• 7 Summary
• 8 Further Reading

HOW PREPARED DO YOU NEED TO BE?

• The RPO is the longest acceptable time period over which you can tolerate losing data. If your RPO is one hour, then your data should be backed up at least every hour.
• The RTO is the longest time that’s acceptable for restoring operations.

DEVISING A RECOVERY PLAN

1. All important data should be backed up offsite and updated frequently. At least one backup has to be offsite, since a disaster is likely to take out local copies.
2. There should be an efficient way to bring up a system which is equivalent to the one that failed. It needs to run the same software and have the most recent backup data.

OFFSITE BACKUP

RESTORATION

CLOUD FAILOVER

RECOVERY TESTING

PEOPLE ISSUES

• System passwords need to be secure, but they shouldn’t be in one person’s exclusive possession. There needs to be a contingency plan, such as keeping them in a locked safe.
• If the one person who understands the system quits or becomes incapacitated, that can be a disaster all by itself. Procedures for running and restoring the system should be written down so that someone else can pick up the job.
• Storing the information only on the server invites trouble if the server goes down. Paper copies in a locked, fireproof box are safer. Storing them on a secure, independent site is another approach. Make sure that more than one person has the key or password.
• All employees should have copies of the information about their responsibilities in an emergency, and management should have their contact information.
• It isn’t necessary to rely just on employees for recovery planning. Hiring a managed services company can be a cost-effective approach. A business with just a few employees can’t normally keep an IT manager, but a managed service provider can help it to deal not just with disasters but with the more routine complications of running a server.

SUMMARY

FURTHER READING

• The U.S. government’s Ready site offers recommendations for an IT disaster recovery plan.
• Small Business Computing discusses small companies’ needs for a recovery plan and suggests some affordable solutions.
• Network World discusses recovery options for smaller companies, including cloud services and virtualization, as well as the value of social media in informing affected people.