Owning a small business these days is a bit like performing in the circus. Some days it feels as if you’re juggling chainsaws just to stay on top of things. Our days are full, and sometimes, important longer-term tasks get put aside, things like preparing your organization for a major IT disaster.
The good news is that you can start from scratch and build a disaster recovery plan in five stages. If you can find the time, you could start your DR plan tomorrow.
Starting Point: Take an IT Asset Inventory
The first thing to do is to know and understand what you have, and what you have to lose! Organize your data, docs and files, remove unused data, clean up folder systems, and compress your storage. You should take stock of all your hardware, software and application licenses, and keep hardcopy records of important suppliers, product (versions), license keys, etc. You should take note of where any additional copies of your messages, files or data reside, in case everything onsite becomes unavailable or is destroyed.
Stage 1: Periodically Back-Up Your Most Critical Information
Prioritize your data according to time sensitivity. This is called “tiering” your data. In the event of a disaster, you need to know what data needs to be restored immediately, what needs to be restored in two hours, what needs to be restored by 24 hours, and so on. Next, your organization should acquire external, removable data storage drives, and load them with your highest priority data, reloading them as major changes occur (no less frequently than monthly!). Store these drives off-site, securely, in an accessible location. And consider how you might implement an alternative IT system, using this back-up information, in case disaster strikes.
Stage 2: Test Your On-Site Recovery Abilities
Set up an external drive to do real-time incremental backups, as opposed to periodic backups – in an automated, background fashion. Real-time incremental back-ups improve your ability to deal with onsite problems such as accidental deletions, data corruptions or even storage drive failures. Remember to keep all firmware, operating software and apps current. Know where to turn to obtain new equipment, and know how to reload the new systems quickly in order to reconnect the backup data.
Stage 3: Establish Real-time Off-Site Back-ups
To do this you will need to replicate your data real-time to a secure and accessible location through an appropriate network connection. For many businesses, this means a Cloud Service, but it can also mean any affiliated site that would remain unaffected by threats to your office. Ultimately you want to create an off-site real-time incremental back up. And you want to facilitate this by consolidating, virtualizing and simplifying your processing and storage capabilities. Getting to this level immensely improves your disaster recovery capability.
Stage 4: Implement Real-Time, Off-Site Redundancy
You want to make sure your disaster recovery will work by matching your primary site with off-site capacity. Clone the most critical systems off-site and keep them current. Implement tools to test synchronization, availability of data, and to automate failovers, switching to back-up operational mode. Most importantly, you need to verify that these systems are recoverable according to the priorities or tiers you previously established for sequencing your systems activation at the second site.
Once that’s verified, you’ve pretty much done it, you’ve established the fundamentals of a DR program. It is not a simple task, and it takes a while to get it right. But every organization needs one, especially when businesses are seeing so much more damage being caused by unforeseen natural events and other threats. Building a DR plan will leave you with one less chainsaw to juggle.
