Do You Have a Disaster Recovery Plan?

Does your business have a computer system disaster recovery plan in place? If you do, is it up to the job? To assess the situation, the following steps are recommended:

  • Examine your existing plan (if you have one) to determine how much protection you need.
  • Ask yourself how long your business can afford to have its system(s) down.
  • Assess how much data you can afford to lose.
  • Pinpoint all critical servers, applications, and related software.
  • Document the procedures necessary to bring your server(s) back online.
  • Look at the availability of your IT personnel in the event of an unpredictable disaster. If you rely on an outside consulting firm, how fast can they get someone to your place of business?

Testing

If you have a plan in place, that’s good. However, it needs to be tested or how do you know that it will even work? Many excuses can be found for not testing a recovery plan – lack of time, disruption to workflow, insufficient funds in the budget, etc. However, it’s vital to test your program on a regular basis to ensure that everything operates the way it should. Don’t wait until disaster strikes to discover the flaws in your plan.

Testing your system will provide you with the following important information:

  • How long the recovery took.
  • What data was challenging to recover.
  • Did all applications return to the expected state.
  • Did your IT personnel find the process feasible.

Recovery Plan Assistance

If all of the above seems overwhelming, we can help you to design an optimum backup and recovery plan. With our expertise your downtime and the consequences for your business will be minimal. Please contact us for more information.