Disaster Recovery - Strategies

Strategies

Prior to selecting a disaster recovery strategy, a disaster recovery planner first refers to their organization's business continuity plan which should indicate the key metrics of recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) for various business processes (such as the process to run payroll, generate an order, etc.). The metrics specified for the business processes are then mapped to the underlying IT systems and infrastructure that support those processes.

Incomplete RTOs and RPOs can quickly derail a disaster recovery plan. Every item in the DR plan requires a defined recovery point and time objective, as failure to create them may lead to significant problems that can extend the disaster’s impact. Once the RTO and RPO metrics have been mapped to IT infrastructure, the DR planner can determine the most suitable recovery strategy for each system. The organization ultimately sets the IT budget and therefore the RTO and RPO metrics need to fit with the available budget. While most business unit heads would like zero data loss and zero time loss, the cost associated with that level of protection may make the desired high availability solutions impractical. A cost-benefit analysis often dictates which disaster recovery measures are implemented.

Some of the most common strategies for data protection are (1) backups made to tape and sent off-site at regular intervals, (2) backups made to disk on-site and automatically copied to off-site disk, or made directly to off-site disk, (3) replication of data to an off-site location, which overcomes the need to restore the data (only the systems then need to be restored or synchronized), often making use of storage area network (SAN) technology, and (4) the use of high availability systems which keep both the data and system replicated off-site, enabling continuous access to systems and data, even after a disaster.

In many cases, an organization may elect to use an outsourced disaster recovery provider to provide a stand-by site and systems rather than using their own remote facilities, increasingly via cloud computing.

In addition to preparing for the need to recover systems, organizations also implement precautionary measures with the objective of preventing a disaster in the first place. These may include (1) local mirrors of systems and/or data and use of disk protection technology such as RAID, (2) surge protectors — to minimize the effect of power surges on delicate electronic equipment, (3) use of an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and / or backup generator to keep systems going in the event of a power failure, (4) fire prevention / mitigation systems such as alarms and fire extinguishers, and (5) anti-virus software and other security measures.