4 Ways to Sidestep Disastrous Disaster Recovery Plans

Now that hurricane season is in full swing, it’s more important than ever to ensure your disaster recovery (DR) plan is disaster proof. However, regardless of the season, enterprises should have the proper tools in place to protect their data, should disaster strike.

Any catastrophe, whether it’s a power outage, flood, cyber attack or another type of incident, can cost your business and affect your bottom line. A DR plan is a document that allows businesses to recover from any of those mishaps. The plan should contain the steps that need to be taken to get back up and running, including information on the company’s IT infrastructure and application data.

Actifio provided the following steps to ensure business continuity and avoid a disastrous disaster recovery plan:

Complete your plans

A data center includes various resources. Without a solid understanding of a data center and its inventory and operations, it’s difficult to construct a complete and error-proof plan.

According to Actifio, “While you can make cookies without butter, the resulting output will not look or taste good, and in the end you will have wasted your preparation and cooking time. Implementing an incomplete plan results in similar challenges. You will spend hours of hard work with an end result that will be very different than expected.”

The vendor advises businesses to: “Understand your entire infrastructure as you create your plan and ensure that all critical facets are included in the recovery document.”

Have protection for your plan

When disaster strikes, it often means that a data center is inaccessible. However, many often store their plans within a data center, which puts the plan at risk. Plans should be stored in a remote location that wouldn’t be affected by a large scale disaster.

Actifio suggests making three copies of the plan and keeping them in three “geographically disparate locations.”

Update your plan

“Modern infrastructures are constantly evolving as data grows and new technologies emerge,” Actifio reported. While these changes deliver a boost in productivity, they also often mean changes to fundamental business processes. And that, in turn, means changes to your DR plan. Actifio advises that businesses review and update DR plans every six months, at least.

Test your plan

Testing is a vital step when it comes to planning for a disaster. How do you know that your DR plan will work? You won’t until you test it. Testing a DR plan gives you the opportunity to find out what works and what doesn’t, where the potential holes are and more. Actifio suggests testing it annually, if not more.