Is DR still the IT poor relation?

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.