Top 5 Reasons Your Business Should Have a DR Plan

SteelEye Technology, Inc., provider of business continuity and disaster recovery solutions for multi-vendor IT infrastructures, has seen companies struggle, even fail, because they did not have a disaster recovery plan in place.

For example, 2008 was one of the most active Atlantic hurricane seasons in history in terms of U.S. landfalls. Six hurricanes made U.S. landfalls and approximately 50 million Americans live in locations that FEMA has designated as hurricane-prone areas.

A scary thought for data center managers is that hurricanes are only one potential disaster. Here’s a checklist of the top five things that all companies should do to ensure business continuity despite a hurricane, power outage, terrorist attack or other unfortunate event.

1. Plan ahead. Disasters come in different forms. In some instances, large percentages of the workforce will evacuate. Make sure your plan has enough staff support to succeed. Also, make sure the plan isn’t dependent on electricity or transportation that may not be available during a disaster.
2. Consider a server migration. It might make sense to replicate your data to a secondary server that is located at least several hundred miles from your primary site. This especially makes sense if you have employees located away from the primary site that may not be affected by the disaster but still need access to the data it holds.
3. Go virtual. Virtualization is an affordable, convenient way to protect data. By creating a virtual machine environment, the resulting system is one that can run all (or select) operating systems and software that exist on the base hardware.
4. Practice makes perfect. Planned downtime is essential to successful business continuity and disaster recovery planning. By setting and executing a plan when you’re not restricted by the threat or result of a disaster, you can hone it to perfection. Again, knowing exactly what to do when your access to business-critical applications or data may be restricted could possibly save your business.
5. Don’t be shy. Business continuity isn’t easy. You may want to place your trust in a company that specializes in the field, rather than trying to go it alone. The time you’ll spend researching and developing a relationship with a disaster recovery solutions provider, can make all the difference.