Disaster Recovery Planning

In Disaster Recovery, Do You Know What You Are Recovering?

In theory, disaster recovery planning and management are what every self-respecting organization should practice. Restoring systems, databases, and networks – and more importantly, IT-enabled business functionality – after an incident is one of the highest priorities for most enterprises, so dependent on their IT to carry out their daily activities. The problem is that too many organizations do not know, in real terms, what they should be recovering. Read more

2016-10-31T10:50:34+11:00By |Disaster Recovery|

Why Disaster Recovery in Your Pocket is Logical and Natural

Listen to some marketing gurus and you’ll hear that human beings were never meant to sit at desks. Mobility is built into people, they claim. In that case, as technology is driving today’s businesses, it needs to move around with and adapt to people (and not vice versa). The mobile user experience should be the priority, and neither network connection nor smaller screen should interfere with productivity and effectiveness. That raises some interesting questions about the disaster recovery of such a mobile-oriented set-up. Read more

2016-02-01T11:15:05+11:00By |Disaster Recovery|

How Much Does Disaster Recovery Cost?

Good disaster recovery may be what saves an enterprise from extinction. But disaster recovery planning and preparation has a cost in terms of time, effort and money. Senior management knows that a company will need to make an investment in order to build the robustness to survive an IT catastrophe. Now it wants to know how much that investment will be; not just to understand impacts on profitability, but also to be able to plan it appropriately to gain optimal protection with expenditure that can be controlled or phased over time. Read more

2015-01-14T12:27:26+11:00By |Disaster Recovery|

Where are the Likely Holes in Your Disaster Recovery Planning?

No disaster recovery plan is perfect. However, there is a big difference between knowing about and managing limitations; and being caught wrong-footed by a problem you never thought about. Some items seem to consistently make the ‘hit parade’ of omissions and absences in DR plans. Before spilling the beans, here’s a hint to help you guess what they might be. They each involve a lack of vision beyond the limited point of view of IT servers and applications in a data centre. Read more

2015-01-12T15:20:57+11:00By |Disaster Recovery|

Disaster Recovery Planning also needs Business Common Sense

For those who haven’t had the benefit of participating in a DRI International course on disaster recovery planning best practices, watch out! There’s still a tendency in some organisations to adopt a ‘one size fits all’ or else a “leave it to IT” approach when it comes to disaster recovery planning. While eliminating complexity may be good, over-simplification isn’t. But modularity and flexibility in your DR planning can help, as long as the modules fit together and cover the range of outcomes identified. Here’s a quick checklist to make sure that your DRP can handle different incidents or disaster situations. Read more

2014-07-15T10:58:42+10:00By |Disaster Recovery|

Disaster Recovery Planning – How Much Do IT Vendors Really Understand?

There is no shortage of hardware and software products to help enterprises with their IT, but when it comes to disaster recovery planning, vendors may not be the best placed to advise. The most effective DR also means having the right people taking the right actions at the right time, something that transcends the possibilities of machines and automation. Both dimensions, human and machine, need to be taken into account. Conversely, vendor promises that their solution is ‘all you need for DR’ should be taken with a good pinch of salt. Read more

2014-02-25T09:26:44+11:00By |Disaster Recovery|

How to Simulate a Disaster or Even Deliberately Create One

As every good disaster recovery practitioner knows, a DR plan must be tested if it is to have real credibility. DR managers are often limited to simulations of disasters, with varying degrees of effectiveness. In general, the two dimensions that you will seek to optimise in your disaster recovery planning are the realism of the simulation and the involvement of people in the organisation. Yet as we’ll see below there may still be one disaster that you can do for real – and without sending your enterprise into a tailspin. Read more

2013-11-25T10:33:18+11:00By |Disaster Recovery|