So most of you are hopefully doing backups of your physical and virtual server workloads. This in most cases is just the table stakes. Additionally, this is only a minimal part of the the Disaster Recovery Equation. Read on to learn the details of what Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Entails.
We will outline how to ensure your Backup Routine is effective. All, this is key in ensuring your ability to recover business critical systems and services in event of a disaster!
Furthermore, running those lovely backups and filing the data away securely is just part of the routine. This includes preforming a restoration of files every now and then. It’s all a critical part, but that’s just the Disaster Recovery Basics!
Isn’t a backup all I need to Perform Disaster Recovery ?
First, the short answer is maybe, but probably not. Seconds, there are terms like Backup Disaster Recovery or (BDR). They are all just high level an pretty much non descriptive and mean something different in different contexts. So, there are a myriad of things that affect Disaster Recovery, but lets start with some of the basics. There are few terms you have to be familiar with :
- Business Continuity Plan
- Identifying Key Personnel / Alternative Personnel / External Resources
- Identifying Key Systems
- Disaster Recovery Basics
- Recovery Hardware / Platform / Location
- Alternative Remote Connectivity
- Restoration of Key system
- RPO – Recovery Point Objective
- RTO – Recovery Time Objective
First, we will go through each topic at a high level. Secondly, will break these topics out further in subsequent blogs. There is a lot to unpack here. Additionally, we have a great deal of experience developing, maintaining and preforming Disaster Recovery Exercises. Lastly, DR is a subset of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). Your Business need to have an overarching / encompassing plan or BCP.
Business Continuity Plan
I’m going to start in this series at the Business Continuity Plan. Additionally, Disaster Recovery is a subset of the Business Continuity Plan (BCP). It’s not sexy IT, it’s all about knowing who, what and how to perform recovery of key systems in-case of an event. Its a living document that changes and should be reviewed on a regular basis. Lastly, an event could be a result of :
- Recovery of Business Critical Systems due to localized disaster (Flood, Hurricane, Pandemic, etc.)
- Recovery of Business Critical Systems due to failure, corruption or hardware failure
Identifying Key Personnel / Alternative Personnel
So to start there are may be some touchy topics here. First the Business Continuity Plan is a plan that outlines how your business it going to respond in case of a of event and times lines to return to limited and full operations. Additionally, It’s not just about IT, it’s a myriad of things like facilities, connectivity, people, IT devices, and software. The Disaster Recovery Plan for IT are the system that support the business.
So, to start, depending on the type of event. You may not be able to respond, or execute the Disaster Recovery Plan due to circumstance. It’s a real possibility. You need to have an alternative person other than you that can preform your functions. In simplest terms, they need to simply follow a plan and understanding what they are reading. So identify those people, or outside resources and put them in your Disaster Recovery Plan. Oh an make sure they know it! Lastly, someone needs to own the coordination of the overall activities, not just IT Related. It should not be you!
Identifying Key Systems
As part of the plan you need to identify what systems and devices are going to need to be functional for limited Phase one operations. These could be :
- Alternative Facilities
- Phones & Connectivity
- Core IT Systems
- Internet and VPN Connectivity
- Active Directory / Domain Services
- Base Physicals Systems / Virtual / Cloud
- Base Recovery Platform
- Basic Business Application Services
- Accounting Systems
- Payroll Systems
- ERP/CRM
First, as you can see two thirds of the activities are not entirely Information Technology related. Furthermore, a lot of small business don’t have a plan to operate in case of an event.
Disaster Recovery Basics Conclusion
So, regardless if you are a CEO, CIO or Single IT resource for your company, you need to start with a Business Continuity Plan which encompasses the Disaster Recovery Plan. I’ve add a link to a sample .Network Services can assist in developing that plan and keeping it maintained. Additionally, Network Services, and assist in making technology recommendations that make recovery of Core IT systems, less complex and time consuming.