Backup and recovery policies are an important part of disaster recovery planning or DRP. (Also see Backup and Restore are Critical to Avoid Risk). The disaster recovery plan is sometimes called business continuity planning or BCP and is concerned with how a business deals with a disaster to ensure its continuation as a viable business. The actual contents of such a plan depend on the type of business and other variables. However, one part of any effective plan should cover the computer network operations.
The disaster recovery plan for network operations should explain how a business will cope with a catastrophe that results in, among other things, electrical outages, data loss, and security breaches. As with backup and restore procedures, the plan is useless without testing. Some businesses choose a slow time of the month to unplug their servers or take down the network components to test how well the business processes cope with their loss.
Many businesses find their servers and other network components are so absolutely essential to their business viability that they must install redundant servers or other standby network components that automatically take over when the primary components fail or are taken offline. This redundancy is called failover. Ideally, a takeover by a redundant secondary network or component occurs so seamlessly that users are not aware of it. It is a good idea to fully test all parts of a disaster recovery plan or business continuity plan upon its completion and once per year thereafter.
Note that no disaster recovery plan is perfect. When Hurricane Allison inundated Houston, Texas in June 2001, it turned out that fuel delivery was the weak link in many disaster recovery plans. Because the capacity of the typical generator fuel tank produces less electricity than the 24 to 72 hour’s worth of power needed during the electrical outages, some Houston businesses, which turned to backup generators for power after the storm, were unable to keep their networks online. You need to make sure that your organization’s disaster recovery plan takes into consideration what to do for power outages due to natural disasters.
If you are interested in templates for disaster recovery plans or business continuity plans or technical writers who can write the plans for you, check out the following links:
Business Continuity Sample
