{"id":22886,"date":"2022-11-28T08:52:43","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T08:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/?p=22886"},"modified":"2022-11-28T08:52:46","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T08:52:46","slug":"three-key-ingredients-for-the-ideal-disaster-recovery-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/2022\/11\/28\/three-key-ingredients-for-the-ideal-disaster-recovery-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Three key ingredients for the ideal Disaster Recovery strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder, DH2i, considers\u00a0three\u00a0components that the best DR strategies\u00a0should incorporate.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder of DH2i<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

As we look toward 2023, are you 100% confident in your company\u2019s Disaster Recovery (DR) plan? Are you feeling flush with tons of extra money in your DR budget that you have no idea what to do with? Are you at complete peace because you enjoy total awareness of each and every conceivable threat that could stick your organization with unplanned downtime?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you answered yes to the three questions above, then I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if you next told me you typically make your commute to the office by unicorn. The reality is that the perfect DR architecture can appear so out of reach that it seems almost mythical \u2013 and it may feel totally unattainable to many companies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If your organization hasn\u2019t been forced to respond to an emergency downtime event, adequate DR investment can be a hard sell. It can feel way too cumbersome to try to explain to everyone who has decision-making authority on your team the extent of the resources \u2013 both monetary and staff \u2013 that must be funneled towards DR planning and implementation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Limited finances aren\u2019t the only challenge when it comes to DR, though. Traditional DR solutions and their associated management complexity can drive even the best IT team crazy. It\u2019s almost as rare as unicorn-riding to have a completely homogenous IT environment. Without one, companies that want to protect their critical data assets are stuck leveraging a panoply of DR solutions, each with a unique set of management nuances and restrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of your industry, whether your company is just ramping up with baseline DR strategies or more prepared, consider these three components that the best DR strategies should incorporate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Agreement among stakeholders<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR needs for one organization won\u2019t necessarily match another\u2019s. It\u2019s a sad but true fact that not every company can pay what it costs to onboard the best tech on the market to safeguard their IT installation. That said, there\u2019s no reason to have your budget allocation be a random guess. Instead, the decision should be guided by how damaging you expect downtime events would be to your teams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you think through these two questions, it can help you gain an understanding of what\u2019s needed from a cost perspective:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • When a downtime event happens, what are the costs to your company? This reckoning should include the financial impact that your company suffers from lost revenue, as well as the usability impact on your end-users<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • If a catastrophic downtime event occurs, what\u2019s the worst possible impact you\u2019ll accept? This is an upsetting question to ponder, but if your company doesn\u2019t have an infinite budget, then it\u2019s important to consider this. Knowing what you\u2019ll accept will help your organization determine the technology it will need to ensure the correct level of disaster-preparedness that all of your stakeholders agree is essential<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Once your teams have thoroughly researched and vetted these questions, the next step is to align expectations throughout all levels of your organization. As Gartner states, you must \u201c[<\/del><\/s>e]<\/del><\/s>nsure that DR planning is done in alignment with Business Continuity management (not in an IT-only vacuum).\u201d If you can ensure that all stakeholders have agreed on exactly what your company\u2019s unique disaster readiness needs are, then it can make a challenging process more streamlined when it comes to budget allotment and solution identification. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    2. Strong documentation that includes role assignment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    When you initially respond to an outage, you don\u2019t want to be synthesizing your recovery plan on the fly. Instead, you need to be ready for the moment that you find yourself in a Disaster Recovery situation. The best way to prepare is to create, in advance, a meticulously detailed recovery plan that includes clear role designation. You want this plan to include a blow-by-blow playbook of recovery procedures \u2013 specifically, step-by-step instructions and commands that are in writing for anyone in your IT department to execute when needed to resuscitate your environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A key clarification needed here is your approach to framing your disaster response protocols. You\u2019ll want to design plans based on what assets you might lose or that could be compromised at your company. For example, your loss categories might include sites, applications or third-party services. Constructing your plan at this level is prudent because even if IT has a solid understanding of the assets and systems you could lose, an outage can come about in countless ways that no one has likely thought of before. So don\u2019t base your DR plan on the actual downtime-causing events. By basing your DR response plan around loss categories, you\u2019ll never have to stress about whether future events happen to fall into a limited framework of downtime-triggering events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    3. Smart automation for ease of management<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You\u2019re not done yet as the last step is the most important. While a thorough, easy-to-execute process sets you on the right path for DR, your DR strategy won\u2019t be complete without smart automation. With automation-ready technology, your systems will be to<\/del><\/s> be prepared to react at once to a threat or a detected outage, and they\u2019ll automatically begin to facilitate your DR processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Strive to ensure that your DR management strategy simplifies user experience by minimizing concurrent recovery solutions and unifying your environment. Don\u2019t make your IT team deal with separate SQL Server Availability Groups on Linux and Windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In conclusion, as you take these steps to create an optimum DR strategy for your company, remember that there\u2019s no definite endpoint for DR planning. Avoid complacency and always approach DR as an evolution that\u2019s perpetually on-going. If your DR plan is supported by thorough research into the impacts of downtime on your company, and you have stakeholders who share eye-to-eye expectations on DR requirements, then you\u2019ll be in excellent shape on the path to creating an ideal DR plan. Add detailed documentation with clear recovery steps for all vulnerable assets, automated technology that\u2019s easy-to-manage and you\u2019ll enjoy nearest-to-zero total downtime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder, DH2i, considers\u00a0three\u00a0components that the best DR strategies\u00a0should incorporate.\u00a0 As we look toward 2023, are you 100% confident in your company\u2019s Disaster Recovery (DR) plan? Are you feeling flush with tons of extra money in your DR budget that you have no idea what to do with? Are you at complete peace because you enjoy total awareness of each and every conceivable threat that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":22887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3488,17,19,26,1034],"tags":[2040,209,2042,292,3980],"class_list":["post-22886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","category-enterprise-security","category-features","category-industry-expert","category-north-america","tag-dh2i","tag-disaster-recovery","tag-don-boxley","tag-security-2","tag-smart-automation"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22886"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22893,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22886\/revisions\/22893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}