BEST PRACTICES FOR DISASTER RECOVERY IN THE CLOUD?

When you are operating a business or organization it is necessary to create an actionable and sound disaster recovery plan in order to protect yourself in the event of a natural disaster like a fire or flood, as well as from cyber-attack.  Disaster recovery plans help your organization to survive and thrive.

With disaster recovery services it makes restarting critical operations seamless and simple.  Cloud recovery services also help to mitigate major losses in revenue that inevitably happen following a slow-down in operations.  To keep your system running while maintaining profitability, a strong disaster plan is absolutely necessary.  Our plan supports business continuity.

In the unlikely event of a disaster, it is vital that you are engaged in a series of best practices to keep your organization safe and operable.  The importance of cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery is vitally essential.  These practices are helpful in protecting business operations, while providing safety against lost data as well as secure document backup.

Develop an effective disaster recovery plan   

The first thing any business needs in developing a disaster recovery plan is a good business impact analysis.  This will enable you to identify your system and dependencies.  Obviously, giving vital importance to your database is a critical component in protecting it.  Disaster recovery services help to support data backup securely.  A competent cloud disaster service will assist you in recognizing the associated risk that your company may face.  Also, disaster recovery helps find the impact of the risks on your IT systems and business procedures.  You should choose those disaster recovery plans that minimize your cost while maximizing benefits.  We also offer select services of continuous data protection as well as full data backup services.  You will have more frequent recovery points if you have more copies of your data.

DATA BACK-UP AND STORAGE – LOCAL OR CLOUD?

In a time of disaster, keeping your data safe and available should be a priority.  In the data-conscious world, cloud computing is becoming ubiquitous.  It offers various advantages for disaster recovery which are described below:

• Programs and data can be recopied and restored rapidly due to automatic backup of your company’s programs and data…off-site.

• For availability and maximum data security, redundancy of data banks is applied.

• Automatic fail-back and fail-over events.

Although, during disaster recovery, local storage is still useful.  For instance, local storage is the most consistent option in case of any disturbance in internet connectivity or any external networks.  The best fit and highest protection for many businesses are a combination of local and cloud storage.

TEST YOUR PLAN REGULARLY

After the full testing of the disaster recovery plan, you will be aware of the efficacy of the plan in the face of disaster.  Regular testing is suggested as the business environment is continuously evolving and changing.  For the most ideal outcome, the following steps should be followed.

• For your test, set specific goals and define key performance indicators clearly.

• Along with the testing environment, look closely at the production environment as well.

• Select a test that transforms your unique business requirements into deliberation.

• After a full review of test results, update your plan as required.

To ensure system adherence, constant testing at frequent intervals is required.  This is essential especially, after adding new services such as cloud recovery services, network infrastructure changes as well as well as changes in human resources.  You should also include a brief review of the disaster recovery plan with every vital technology placement as well as process improvement.  For example, you will engage both internal and external partners by conduction cross-functional tests on critical processes.  You can use multiple scenarios for the testing.  You should also completely review your plan from top to bottom at least once per year.  After the wide-range review, you can adapt the reflected changes in your organization accordingly.

CONSIDER DISASTER RECOVERY AS A SERVICE (DRAAS).  ​

Outsourcing to disaster recovery as a service is an alternative option if you don’t have disaster recovery professionals in you in-house office.  Generally, a DRAAS partner can suggest best practices for your ideal business needs.  This is essential to maintain a balance between your unique business needs and essential IT investments.   

For the backup of critical processes, DRAaaS uses cloud resources.  It is also available for creating a secondary infrastructure to secure your complex data in the event of a disaster.  With the help of DRaaS, you can get your data protected and avoid data loss although, the business environment is constantly evolving and changing.  A proficient DRaaS partner can implement instruction according to test results and update your system for maximum security.  

You should also pay attention to your DraaS agreement.  It consists of what will and what will not be offered with your cloud service.  In order to avoid any disturbance, you need to understand it.  You must ensure which operations and what services are essential for this service.  You should know about the accessibility of data and applications and how rapidly they are accessed.  Make sure you are comfortable with the testing and update of service along with the guarantee of the integrity of data.

If you business would like suggestions on the development, testing, or implementation of disaster recovery plans, fee free to contact Abtech Technologies.