A data center disaster recovery plan (DRP) is essential for data centers that stand to lose the most when the worst happens. Your data center should be ready to deal with any emergency, from malicious cyber attacks to natural disasters.
Data centers serve as the backbone of global IT infrastructure. Whether it’s a proprietary data center dedicated to enterprise operations or a large-scale facility for services provision, ensuring it’s up and running at all times is the top priority.
In this article, we’ll discuss the following:
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A DRP outlines the policies and procedures for running operations during and after a disaster. Any event that disrupts routine operations can be considered a disaster, for example, a power outage, hurricane, or ransomware attack.
(Source: Seven tiers of disaster recovery)
DRP is designed to prevent data loss or failure of equipment as a result of a disaster. The primary objective is to restore operations to normal as soon as possible.
A DRP shouldn’t be seen as a plan to implement in the aftermath of a disaster. A good DRP is just as preventative as it assesses the weaknesses in the systems and identifies possible risks. That, in turn, allows enterprises to prepare better defenses.
Most importantly, a data center recovery plan is essential for ensuring a near-perfect uptime. It’s no secret that downtime can result in hundreds of thousands and, in some cases, millions of dollars worth of losses. With a proper plan, teams can restore access to data and services promptly, ensuring uptime is minimal and doesn’t affect overall availability.
A DRP also helps mitigate complete data loss by providing a way for data restoration from backups. This, in turn, ensures data is secure and always available. It also prevents the exploitation of ransomware attacks.
So, what makes a DRP foolproof? Here are some essential things to cover with your planning:
As part of the planning, conduct a thorough risk assessment to identify potential risks to the infrastructure and premises. Consider this as an opportunity to discover weaknesses in your facility and the systems housed in it.
The purpose of assessing risk tolerance is to identify how much downtime your company can bear. It provides a baseline for strategizing and mapping out recovery efforts.
Consider business impact analysis (BIA) an extension of the above point. This process helps determine how long critical operations can be down before significant damage starts to kick in. In an ideal world, you’d want all your redundancies and security measures to ensure 100 percent uptime. But with disaster recovery, we’re considering the worst-case scenario and preparing accordingly.
So, BIA will help you set recovery objectives according to your business's tolerance for downtime.
The inventory of all your assets, especially equipment, is essential for devising a DRP. Data centers comprise hundreds, if not thousands, of assets. While not every piece of equipment or software is mission-critical, many are.
Having an actively updated inventory increases asset visibility and also allows you to understand which components of the infrastructure are critical and, therefore, must be prioritized.
Your DRP should define the objectives for recovery. You need to define two things in your plan: the Time Objective (RTO) and the Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
RTO is concerned with the time to recover all applications/data, whereas RPO is concerned with recovering essential files/data for operations continuity.
In other words, you define the time operations must be restored.
A DRP wouldn’t work if the people involved don’t know or understand what’s required of them. Assign roles and responsibilities clearly so everyone knows exactly what to do in case of a disastrous event.
List the names of each person in the team and define their respective responsibilities in detail. It should be clear who reports to whom so that the progress of recovery efforts can be managed.
Identify those sites in the plan if you have data backed up off-site. Similarly, identify the location of any spare equipment you may have stored to use in case of hardware failure. These recovery sites ensure the people responsible for restoring data and equipment know about and have access to it.
DRP should also have a communication plan defining how stakeholders must be informed about the event. It involves putting someone in charge of communication so teams are well-informed about developments.
Similarly, define specific, actionable procedures that assigned personnel can follow. For more complex processes, define step-by-step instructions. All significant tasks should have a well-defined procedure, from recovery efforts to post-recovery reports. This creates clarity and ensures that the task is completed as intended, even when responsible individuals are replaced.
If you’re not testing your data center recovery plan, you can’t be sure it’ll work when a disaster hits. Once you’ve defined and documented the plan, perform practice tests to find and fix any issues.
Run drills and simulate disastrous situations to see how well your plan performs. You can also see if the efforts achieve the recovery objectives, particularly RPO. Instead of detecting issues when faced with an actual disaster, a test run can help you tweak your plan and policies to solidify your approach.
Although DRP contributes to business continuity, the two are different. While disaster recovery plans cover IT operations mainly, business continuity plans ensure all business plans are operational in case of an emergency. The latter is much more comprehensive, and DRP is a part of it.
Business continuity hinges on infrastructure and IT operations restoration. Many business operations rely on the data center and other enterprise systems.
Don’t underestimate the importance of maintenance of your equipment for recovery. More importantly, your sparing strategy is vital for recovery. When an incident results in equipment failure, having a spare can save the day and keep your uptime perfect.
It’s essential to ensure that all critical equipment has support from a vendor or a third party. Maintenance is preventative as it can help fix issues before they get big and result in failure. It ensures that devices run efficiently and perform well.
Designating spares for critical data center equipment can be helpful if and when equipment fails. However, the spare equipment must be accessible so it can be used quickly with minimal disruptions to operations.
A data center disaster recovery plan shouldn’t be an afterthought. The sooner the recovery is made, the fewer the losses. So it’s essential to prepare for the worst and have dedicated procedures and personnel in place to take the steps to restore operations and recover data.
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