Top 5 disaster recovery tips

With catastrophic events like Hurricane Katrina and the southern California
wild fires affecting millions of Americans in recent years, it is no surprise
that business continuity is top of mind of Small and Mid-Sized Business (SMBs).
Without proper preparation and planning, a natural or man-made disaster can
ruin a business.

A basic, but documented disaster
recovery (DR) plan, with recent backups and a practiced staff, will work
better than a grandiose scheme that hasn't been tested or properly executed.
Yet, most DR plans fail because they lack a few simple elements. Below are the top
5 tips for protecting your data and ensuring business continuity in the face
of disaster.

Document, document, document!

Make sure that every element of your DR process is documented and ensure it
includes the locations of system and other critical disks and data. It is imperative
key staff members-within IT and other areas of the organization-are familiar
with these documented storage places.

One simple, but critical step is to store system passwords in at least two
separate secure locations. Only one of which should be in the same building
as your IT equipment and at least two staff members should have access to the
passwords.

Automate notification processes

Traditionally, one of the key challenges to executing a timely DR plan is the
delay in alerting IT staff to an outage, and subsequent problem diagnosis. This
delay can be reduced by establishing an automated system to notify critical
staff of a disaster by text, phone or email. Train your staff on the system
so they can perform basic DR/back-up tasks unsupervised. You may also be able
to do this through an arrangement with a third-party service provider.

Practice makes perfect…almost

Recent studies have shown that few companies actually test their DR plans on
a regular basis, and as a result, most companies have little faith that their
DR plans will work when needed.

Practice your DR plan on a quarterly basis, or more frequently. This will strengthen
your organization's skills and give you the confidence that your plan will work
in practice. It will also familiarize new staff with the procedure and ensure
your DR strategy is kept up to date by revealing any issues with new equipment
or software.

Back it up

Backing up critical data seems like a no brainer, but if you neglect to do so
no matter how good your DR plan is it will be of no use. Make sure you routinely
back up your data and ensure your backups were successful. Build as much redundancy
into your system as possible to remove any single points of failure. This includes
a multi-path data route to the system, so that you can still access your data
if one path fails.

If backup windows are prohibiting you from capturing all your data on a timely
basis, consider disk to disk to tape backups or continuous backup solutions,
which will not only allow you to offload your backups from the production systems
but also provide faster restores for daily data loss issues.

A tape archive strategy is crucial. Tapes used on a daily basis should be replaced
every six to nine months to avoid deterioration--backed up data has little value
if it cannot be recovered. Other tapes should be replaced on a regular, less
frequent, schedule based on the frequency of use. Being able to back up to a
remote location is worth almost any price, a fireproof vault is not an alternative
to an off-site location.

Protect from the inside

Don't neglect to protect yourself from random theft, vandalism and employee
malice. They can be just as disastrous as anything else. At the very least ensure
that the door to your data/server room is locked, day and night.

SMBs can be the hardest hit by a natural or man made disaster. However, by
following these five tips for disaster recovery you will be able to establish
and maintain a good, tested DR plan that staff will be confident using to ensure
business continuity in the face of any disaster.

Editor's note: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of ITworld.