You never know when or how disaster is going to strike. When it does, however, it’s best to sure that you’re starting your recovery from a full and comprehensive plan, rather than attempting to apply ad hoc and untested solutions. To help ensure your disaster recovery solution is ready to go, consider these nine steps, provided by Adrian Moir, senior consultant for product management at Quest, writing in IT Pro Portal:
- Make sure your asset inventory is current, clearly identifying the item locations, associated networks, and key dependencies;
- Perform a risk assessment, to determine key threats, and the potential impacts;
- Identify critical systems, applications, and data, and common points of failure;
- Determine the key recovery objectives, based on both internal and customer inputs;
- Examine disaster recovery tools and techniques, to determine the most appropriate methods for each critical system;
- Get buy-in from all key stakeholders, beginning with the planning phase;
- Prepare comprehensive documentation of the disaster recovery plan, and notify key members of its availability and location;
- Repeatedly test the disaster recovery plan, in different ways, and involving those with key roles; and
- Regularly revisit and update your plan, to address changes in equipment, roles, and company priorities.
By following these steps, your company should be able to maintain an effective and up-to-date disaster recovery plan, capable of minimizing organizational downtime and disruptions.
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