Five Steps to an Effective Disaster Recovery Plan

WHITE PAPER
Five Steps to an
Effective
Disaster Recovery
Plan
Table of Contents:Headquarters: Introduction and overview of the problemInMage3255-1 Scott Blvd, #102 Step 1 - Determine your business prioritiesSanta Clara , CA 95054 Step 2 - Understand what is required to meet your prioritiesStep 3 - Find the right tools to match your requirements Phone: 1.800.646.3617Local Phone: 408.200.3840 Step 4 - Test and ensure your plan is future-proof Fax: 408.588.1590 Step 5 - Integrate into a strategic business continuity planConclusionEmail: info@inmage.net The InMage differenceWeb: www.inmage.net Appendix: Disaster recovery checklist
© 2007, InMage Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.Abstract
Disaster recovery involves continuous data availability and much more. Companies that understand the key steps to p2 ensuring smooth recovery from a disaster can choose solutions that meet today's need and tomorrow's. This white paper explains the ? ve steps that are necessary to develop and implement a disaster recovery plan, and recommends tools, techniques and best practices to make your efforts a success.
Introduction
Data is the lifeblood of the enterprise. Immediate access to data is the most critical element of any disaster recovery plan. Simply put, if your storage system goes down, data is lost. Even if your system is merely slow to respond with the needed data, you are out of business for that time period. Disaster recovery implies that your data must be accessible at the desired speed and integrity so your business can function normally. Therefore, in this context, your business is only as safe and as sound as your disaster recovery measures.
Many people believe it is dif? cult to construct an adequate disaster recovery plan - and in the past, they were right! It meant cataloging all of your storage devices, applications, databases and more. Then, you had to determine exactly how much data should be backed up, how often, and to what of? ine or offsite devices. Once that was determined, you were hard-pressed to ? nd a window in which to perform the entire system backup. On top of that, a daily or nightly backup did nothing to preserve the integrity and availability of data that was lost in-between time.
Today, however, there is a much better way to address disaster preparedness. The key to this innovative approach is to focus on the issue of business continuity, rather than data recovery. This white paper outlines the ? ve steps to disas-ter recovery, explains each, and points to tools and advice to help you implement each step. By following these steps, you can retain your customers, your reputation, your revenues and your pro? ts. By knowing what (and what not) to do before, during and after a disaster, you can prevent panic, lessen the severity of damage, and implement an organized recovery process.
Step 1 - Determine your business priorities
A disaster recovery plan is a set of procedures to avoid or reduce the risk of a disaster, minimize the effects of a disas-ter, and quickly re-establish business critical processes after a disaster. Unfortunately, for many companies, a disaster recovery plan consists of a backup schedule. They focus on backing up data based on a single dimension - time - with no correlation to an organization's business events. This approach does nothing to ensure that applications are avail-able in the event of a disaster, to guarantee data consistency across geographical boundaries, or to recover information based on a signi? cant transaction or meaningful activity.
In order to ensure disaster recovery, a vital ? rst step is to prioritize and assess the impact of possible events such as software or hardware failure, power disruptions, computer shutdowns due to worms or viruses, loss of key personnel., natural or manmade disasters, and more. A Business Impact Analysis will document the impact of any of the above events on every major business operation (e.g. customer support, sales, service, HR, etc.), and critical applications and systems. As with any important plan, senior management buy-in is essential. However, just as important is involving managers for key lines of business, to ensure that the plan is comprehensive and adequate in the event of a disaster.
To perform this analysis, determine which applications must be available when disaster strikes. For some companies, the "k... [download for more]