The rising amount of data and the ability to collect data continues to rise exponentially. As the volume and velocity of data increase, business demands for data centers, or centralized locations where computing and networking equipment is concentrated have rapidly increased.
When you are responsible for running a data center, you know that no business is immune to the dramatic impacts of sudden loss or even temporary outages. Since disasters such as these are inevitable and mostly unpredictable, the best strategy is to have an effective and efficient disaster recovery plan to minimize disaster losses.
What are disaster recovery plans?
A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a well-documented approach focused on business continuity at the time of security incidents and breaches. It includes sets of policies, tools, and procedures that ensure the recovery of lost data and the continuation of the daily operation of a business. Good plans protect data against the after-effect of human-induced and natural disasters, reduce the impact of cyberattacks, keep client’s confidential data safe, and have robust data recovery procedures in place.
When a disaster strikes, a good disaster recovery plan can mean the difference between preserving data and suffering system downtime.
Disaster recovery plans take on many forms; however, here are seven key steps when creating a robust and successful data center disaster recovery plan:
- Assess Risks to Data and Operations
Before you can begin looking for a data center that can address its disaster recovery needs, you must determine what those needs are.
Usually, data and technology infrastructure develops as a business grows, and before anyone stops to think about potential risks that could pose a threat to operations. However, assessing the risks to data and business operations is a critical first step not only for disaster mitigation recovery but for creating a comprehensive picture of all the ways a disaster could impact operations and infrastructure.
The assessment should also include the risks posed in case of disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and fire strike since these can cause power outages and fuel storages. It is important to understand how these catastrophic events will gravely affect operations of the business from keeping your servers online to protecting your data from sudden breaches.
- Set Clear Recovery Objectives
After assessing the risks to data and operations, set key objectives with Recovery Point Objectives (RPO).
RPO evaluates the maximum limit for manageable data loss that won’t lead to a catastrophic impact on business. On the other hand, RTO (Recovery Time Objective) determines the operational downtime within which the system should have its full recovery.
These parameters will help you decide how quickly you need to take steps to recover the data.
- Identify Involved Professional
To help ease the flow and build a successful DRP, you should identify internal and external personnel involved and ensure that you have their contact information. They should also clearly know what they are supposed to do and what they should prioritize in case a disaster happens.
Since the list of involved personnel would change as the staff changes, the new members should undergo proper training as soon as possible before they receive their responsibilities. Regularly update the list, with current phone numbers, emails and addresses.
Also you should identify the key vendors to be involved to ensure your business’ continuity such as fuel service providers. Getting a dependable emergency fuel service provider will eliminate the downtime of your business and keep your computer servers online in case of brownout, blackout or other unexpected outage.
- Plan emergency response policies and procedures
Once you have identified the risks, the objectives, and the people involved, you need to draft step-by-step procedures to help with the execution of the data recovery strategy. These procedures should follow the already established RTO and RPO strategies. This should also include instructions regarding response and recovery procedures, who to contact, where to go, and what steps to take to reduce damage.
For example, the step-by-step guide could also include tapping a managed IT provider to provide additional support in responding to and mitigating threats to data. Whether you keep all documents offline, or in a private cloud, or both, a detailed guide of response policies and procedures ensures the proper rebuilding and recovery of the entire system. It increases the chances of a successful recovery of a corrupted network infrastructure.
- Ensure Fuel Availability
Your fuel supply chain is a critical component of your data center disaster recovery plan.
When a power interruption occurs, you should have enough fuel reserves to keep your generators running until power is restored.
It is important to have immediate access to a fuel service provider who can provide critical emergency fueling, delivery, transfer and on-site fuel storage in case of power outage.
You should involve your provider in the planning process because when a crisis strikes, access to power and fuel source is critical to keeping your data center operational. Fuel delivery and storage experts can give you advice based on your emergency fuel objectives. They will advise you on the fuel quality and storage requirements that you need to keep your data center running in case a crisis occurs.
Make sure to prepare for the worst case scenario and ensure that you have the best support for keeping your data center online until the crisis is over.
- Choose Your Data Recovery Technique
Draft procedures to create backup operations before a disaster. Make sure to have policies regarding data recovery as well.
There are many types of data recovery solutions, such as hard drive recovery, RAID recovery, tape recovery, and optical recovery. Carefully selecting the right solution/s that is suitable for your organization is critical.
Choose a solution where its capabilities fit the requirements of your business. Other factors to consider in identifying data recovery solutions include storage capacity, recovery timeline, and configuration complexity. Include alternative methods to store and access data in case some infrastructure becomes compromised.
- Update and Test the Plan
Since a thoroughly tested plan is reliable and has a higher chance of giving effective results, make routine tests, and exercises a part of the disaster planning process. The entire disaster recovery team should participate in these tests.
Playing real-time scenarios of data loss and cyberattacks will help reduce the amount of time that they have to take when enacting the plan because they will already know what to do once the unexpected event occurs.
This also helps carefully examine each step of a plan to ensure that it will perform as required. It will help an organization find out what can go wrong with their plan before they need to execute it.
Your DRP should be updated and tested regularly as it also evolves with the needs and risks of the organization changes over time.
Conclusion
Disasters may be unavoidable and unpredictable, but having a disaster recovery plan mitigates risks and limits potential damage; thus, helping the business to get back to operational mode quickly, while also lowering the damage cost. Do not leave recovery to chance. Plan ahead.