Disaster Recovery

Insurance policies are generally regarded as a necessary evil but equally they are not something you would like to be without if there was a significant problem. Similarly, having your systems without a disaster recovery plan is a dangerous approach to your business stability.

Most companies now rely heavily on their systems to provide sales, support, computation or accounting and would suffer badly in financial and operational areas if they were unavailable for a period of time. Disaster recovery is the process of backing up your systems routinely and having an associated plan that describes exactly how to retrieve your systems from a bare, new machine.

In order for the plan to be useful there are a few key rules -

• your data and systems must be backed up regularly. How regularly will depend on how often your data changes and how valuable you regard it. The backup should be stored away from the system and be easily retrieved if the need arises.
• the plan needs to be documented. Ideally the plan should be able to be implemented by almost any of a range of technical staff. The plan should be created to assume that the most capable person might not be available and someone less experienced will be required to carry it out. The plan should be kept in a location that is readily available to any member of technical staff.
• the plan needs to be tested. The only sure way to determine if a plan actually works is to try it. That means wiping a machine out completely and using the plan to step through the entire process. Through this you can be sure of every step.

If you require further information on disaster recovery plans, backups or business continuity then please contact us.