DR – Disaster Recovery, not Diminishing Returns
Disaster
Recovery solutions are still all too often seen as an afterthought, a necessity
that drains money and resource, that will not provide an ROI and will most
likely never be used in a real-life situation. The 2001 attack on the World
Trade Center could be said to have been the trigger for many organisations
taking disaster recovery far more seriously, resulting in a greatly increased
focus on DR capability which led to the rapid deployment of additional hardware
and resource to provide cover against similar disasters, whether man-made or
natural.
Time
and distance have eroded those early concerns over availability, which means
that there are disaster recovery solutions that were put in place shortly after
the events of 2001 that are now many years old, sparsely reviewed and rarely,
if ever, tested.
Making
appropriate plans for Disaster Recovery is essential. There are some key questions that will factor
in every DR decision making process, and they have a common theme: what are the consequencesof the organisation
being out of action?
The
answers will shape your Disaster Recovery solution.
Disaster
Recovery doesn’t just refer to the infrastructure in place to support a recovery
from a catastrophic failure. The right technology is essential of course, but
just as important are the processes
and the people who make up the day to
day operation of the organisation. Effective DR planning needs to incorporate
an equally effective Business Continuity strategy. Once an effective strategy
has been decided upon, it needs to be documented and accessible to everyone who
needs to know what to do in the event of DR invocation.
Having
implemented a sound Disaster recovery and Business Continuity strategy it is
vital that it be tested regularly. Full testing is imperative: the systems and
services that are used in daily operation need to be offline and operation in
in the DR location needs to be able to continue for as long as the recovery
will take. Adequate provision for DR resources
is an essential part of the DR solution, especially where there might be a
significant delay factored into the return to business as usual.
One more point that will always stand repetition is that cost
should not be a determining factor when planning a DR solution. There is a very
simple equation which is ignored surprisingly often.
To
put it simply, the cost of the DR solution should be relative to the cost of an
outage. If your organisation would lose $10m an hour, your disaster recovery
solution should be capable of recovering in a lot less than an hour and if it costs $10m to have the system in place
to do it, the organisation wins in the event of DR invocation. If you spend
$10k but your operation is down for 3 days… well the point is clear.
Now,
some of this may not come as much of a surprise and it could be said that much
of it is obvious. Maybe so, but it might just be worth taking a look at those
DR and BCP plans to see if these obvious requirements are actually met. It
might not be as simple to accomplish as it first seems so it is always worth
seeking help from experienced professionals who make it their business to
ensure your business continues.
