Plan the Work, Work the PlanThoughts on building a disaster recovery plan. - Not all disasters include the total annihilation of your primary data center. When preparing a disaster recovery plan, consider situations of partial data loss. For example, if your Internet connection is down for a short term but all other services are functional, what is your plan?
- Discover and map current network devices. What is the criticality of these devices? How will downtime on those devices impact the business?
- Do you have adequate network documentation for the DR network? When a disaster occurs, everyone will be in a panic. Having proper documentation can be the difference between the success and failure of a disaster recovery.
- How often is your DR plan tested? It's almost certainly not frequent enough.
- Has proper network resiliency been taken into account for the production network? Think about dual power supplies, redundant network paths and redundant circuits. These network resiliencies may prevent you from having to declare a disaster in the first place.
- Implement policies whereby the DR plan is updated when any new network equipment is installed or network software changes are made. This will keep your DR plan up to date. Change management has a DR impact.
- Make sure you patch and upgrade DR equipment, just as you do any other network system or subsystem.
- Don't forget about network security issues when you have a disaster. No end user will put down "anti-virus software" as a critical need. You don't want to get your DR network up after 24 hours of work only to have it brought down by a virus. You must think about security because users won't.
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Acronis Inc. Doftware de Backup.