Executing a test for disaster recovery is actually a progressive, step-by-step process intended to establish whether an organization’s DR plan will work as expected, in a time of crisis. It involves an extensive amount of pre-planning to guarantee that all components are in place prior to conducting tests. If you have a DR maturity model or checklist, these will point you to a number of important components critical to an organization’s Disaster Recovery Program.
Preparing to execute a test of the DR plan involves verifying such key areas as:
- Service arrangements – recovery site, additional skillsets
- Network set-up – upgraded circuits
- Documentation – DR scripts, procedures & other information
- User participation – team organization
Manage services arrangements. This includes completing all third-party arrangements regarding your recovery site: having the right environmental controls in place, addressing security concerns, setting up communications and checking-out the HVAC. Recovery technologies and tools must be operational and function as expected within the secondary site.
Establish network upgrades and connectivity to the recovery site. Define, select, and acquire all services, appliances and other equipment needed for the DR site and validate that all are configured and have adequate capacity and the expected “quality of service”. Each component must be individually tested before a full failover or failback test is run.
Provide documentation for the plan. Create processes, procedures, scripts, and any supporting documentation to ensure all instructions are explicitly laid out. This includes key decisions, activities, roles and reference materials. The information must be sufficiently clear to enable primary recovery team members, competent substitutes and back-up people to execute the plan successfully if required.
Involve the right users. Actual users will fulfill a special role in your DR testing exercises. Create a mock situation whereby these people must operate under a DR scenario, visit the recovery site, use the recovery systems, and follow role-based DR procedures and processes. This will prepare them to contribute successfully in the event of a true disaster.
The key to testing a DR plan is to ensure that throughout each testing level all the bases have been covered before moving on to the next step. It is important to impartially monitor and collect feedback along the way to identify gaps and problematic areas. If an issue arises in any of the levels of testing, it must be remedied before moving on to the next one. Careful planning and organization before conducting a test of a DR plan will help to ensure that each test runs smoothly, minimizes downtime, prevents data losses, and limits testing cost.
