Building a Disaster Recovery Plan for the Cloud Era

Modern businesses cannot afford to lose data. Whatever the cause – natural disaster, human error, or cyber-attack – data loss is costly and extremely risky to the life of a business.

The need for a disaster recovery strategy to ensure uptime, minimize data loss, and maximize productivity in the midst of any compromising situation is a necessary digital assurance policy for any company. The question becomes when a disaster will strike, not if it will.

The Silver Lining

Expanding your current data center operation to create a disaster recovery site is expensive, not only in the cost of hardware and software but in time and resources.  The cloud has changed the rules for backup and disaster recovery. In fact, the cloud as a DR solution is a smart choice, since the cloud is more flexible and usually less expensive than implementing a self-owned DR site.

In addition, cloud infrastructure inherently enables easy and frequent data replication between sites and systems – another key component to maintaining data integrity and reducing RTO and RPO times. Because the cloud resources are pooled, the costs to deliver cloud recovery solutions to businesses are a fraction of the cost normally associated with a DR environment.

Developing an effective DR Plan

Every business is unique and has its own needs when it comes to Disaster Recovery. There’s no such thing as a one size fits all DR plan. That’s why it’s important to determine what’s critical to your business and your customers to make sure you deliver on your commitments no matter what. Then tailor a solution to help you meet those objectives. 

At a high level, disaster recovery planning usually involves the following steps:

• Identify the scopes and boundaries – This is typically the first step towards completing your disaster recovery plan. Identifying the scope involves prioritizing the critical systems for disaster recovery and assigning a value to the failures of those systems.
• Establish the Budget – Budgeting for disaster recovery plans can be tricky. Often you will want to do an assessment of the costs to the business via different disaster scenarios. Comparing different options for recovery can vary the costs of the disaster recovery plan. Reducing RPO and RTO requirements can soften the financial costs of the disaster recovery plan but be realistic and ensure executive management understands the risks of data loss and system availability being stretched out. Both IT and executive management must come to an agreement on the budget and IT will work within the constraints of the budget that has been established.
• Develop and Deploy the Plan – Developing and deploying the plan can be the most involved part of this process. Often the plan is actually a ‘script’ of activities that occur in order and are executed by a recovery team made up of resources from IT. Roles and responsibilities are assigned in the plan as well. Deploying the plan involves choosing the tools and technologies needed to meet the RTO and RPO requirements established in the first step while still working within the constraints of the budget.
• Test – Test, test, test. Disaster recovery plans are simply not effective if they are not properly tested frequently. Test the systems you're going to use in recovery regularly to validate that all the pieces work. Always record your test results and update the disaster recovery plan to address any shortcomings. As your business environment changes, so should your disaster recovery plan.

 A Strategic Disaster Recovery Partner

OneNeck is here to help you maximize uptime, become more efficient and be able to adopt and accelerate with new technologies such as hybrid clouds, while running at the speed of business. We start by conducting a disaster recovery assessment to ensure a planned approach to Disaster Recovery (DR). Taking the time upfront, before implementation, to determine what’s critical to your business and your customers, ensures that you deliver on your commitments no matter what. Then, we tailor our solutions to your particular situation.  So, breathe easy – we got this. Execute your disaster recovery strategy with OneNeck today. Contact us to learn more.