* Reader suggestions for stress-free disaster recovery planning
Last week, I mentioned some correspondence from a reader who re-emphasized the wealth of expertise that exists among my readership. One result of that column was that I asked you to suggest your favorite practical guidelines for preparing for disaster recovery.
Long time reader and correspondent Robert Pearson has obviously done this drill many times. Here’s how he has maintained his sanity:
“You have been selected as a participant in a trip to a distant planet. It is a one-way trip. Upon arrival at the distant planet, you will be required to recreate a working version of the IT infrastructure you left behind. This will be created from locally available resources and is not required to be a technical duplicate. Due to severely limited energy resources, only you, your body and your knowledge, can be transported. What knowledge do you need to accomplish this mission?”
From reader Thomas W. Burdine, Jr., of SunGard:
“Besides ‘test it’, which is very important, the other single, simple, essential rule for disaster recovery, as well as IT in general, remains: Backup, backup, backup, and backup…”
Finally, this excellent list from Jeff O’Hare of Cendant:
* Disaster recovery is a program, not a project, it’s part of an overall and ongoing business resilience effort.
* Develop and maintain a mature disaster recovery philosophy in your production environment – policies, processes, procedures, architecture, planning, etc. This work is continual and significant.
* One undocumented change in production can crater your disaster recovery effort.
* Plan on key technical/operations personnel NOT being available when a disaster takes place.
* Don’t forget to design your network for disaster recovery.
* Disaster recovery exercises (or tests) are not pass or fail, they are meant to mature your program, and if you aren’t continually finding problems, you aren’t exercising hard enough.
So what do we take away from all these suggestions?
