Disaster Recovery Checklist

Which elements make up a good disaster recovery plan?

Backup (local and offsite): Local backup will allow you to restore your data from a local server and saves time, while an off-site backup will, of course, prevent company data being lost as a result of fire, a major virus infection or burglary.

Continuous data protection: CDP is an extremely important part of a good backup plan. A CDP system will automatically save a copy of every single change that is made to data, capturing each version of the data saved by your users. Your administrator can then restore data at any point in time.

Bare metal recovery: Using the technique, you can take a snapshot of your entire disk drive. If your computer has a catastrophic failure, there are various products available that will allow you to reinstall the operating system and application settings just as they were before failure. Administrators and users can recover entire systems in minutes.

Redundant connectivity: A crucial part of any backup plan is having an available secondary connection to keep your Internet, Wide Area Network (WAN) and voice services up and running in the event that your primary connection goes down.

Remote access capabilities for staff access: Giving your staff the option to work remotely (even from home) in the event that your voice and data network goes down is another handy option to have in your disaster recovery plan. Employees can gain access using IPSec and PPTP VPN connectivity, or Citrix/Windows Terminal Server for remote access to Windows resources.

Electronic copies of physical documents held off-site: It is also a good idea to keep electronic copies of your key corporate documents – contracts for example – saved in off-site storage.

Staff training: Having your internal staff trained up on how to manage their own personal systems is a good start. Keeping your staff informed of any changes to your disaster recovery plan while also documenting these changes, makes it easier to keep track of them should something go wrong.