When you sit down on a plane, meet and greet your seatmates, adjust your seatbelt, and get ready for takeoff, what happens? The flight attendant tells you what to do in the event of a disaster. The plan is thorough, covers the bases, and is fairly easy to understand (it’s even got pictures). What if a disaster happened to your business? Do you have a plan in place to deal with that eventuality? I realize it isn’t fun to think about. Planning for something which may never happen could seem like a waste of your time. But, when it hits the fan, what are you going to do?
Back It Up (You’ve Got to Move It, Move It)
It used to be that IT folks (read: geeks) would suggest you backup your data. It didn’t take long to realize that simply having a backup isn’t enough. That backup needs to be somewhere other than your current location. If, for instance, your building burns down or floods, how useful is that backed up data going to be if it was in the same room as the server? Thus, backing up data and moving it to a remote location became the norm. Larger companies have an easier time with this, as they can mirror that data at a different branch, datacenter, etc. But what if you only have one location? Unfortunately, it usually means a manual process. Back up the data to some sort of external device (preferably a hard drive – don’t get me started talking about the failure rate of tapes), then move that external device to a different location (like your home) on a regular basis. Sound familiar? Hopefully, this is something you are doing now. I certainly don’t want to be a fear-monger, but if you’re not doing this now, stop and think what would happen if your data was lost – how long would your business survive? Could you continue to function without that data? In most cases, the answer is, “no.”
Assuming that you are protecting yourself to at least this degree, ask yourself the next question -- “how is this process happening?” Is it something that you’ve entrusted to an employee? Maybe this is something you do yourself. Whatever the case, when was the last time you checked on the process to ensure it is actually happening the way you think? And, as long as we’re talking about it, when was the last time you tested one of your backups? Are you certain that you are backing up what you think you are backing up? Are the backups functional and capable of restoring your business to the point it was before the disaster?
This is a Disaster!
I know when I talk about “disasters” and “catastrophes,” people often think about natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, etc. These disasters could also be less destructive on a regional level (one of our clients recently had their building hit by lightning, destroying their IT infrastructure). But what people don’t often think about is the disasters lurking right within their office – an employee who unintentionally (or even intentionally) destroys data. All of these have the same end result – lost data. Clearly, backing up data is a priority, but it is not a disaster recovery plan – it’s only one piece of a complex puzzle.
What Now?
The scenario: Your data is secure. It’s backed up. You’ve tested the backups and have multiple copies at off-site locations. (These steps already put you well ahead of most of the businesses I talk to on a daily basis!) Out of nowhere, disaster strikes. Your server is lost (for whatever reason). This isn’t a big deal to you at all, since you know your data is safe. What’s step one in your disaster recovery plan? Restore your data? To what? Your server was destroyed, so unless you have another one sitting around, your disaster recovery plan has a flaw in it. It’s certainly not an insurmountable flaw – you can order another server, get your data restored to it, and be back up and running. But what did that downtime cost you?
Think about your own disaster recovery plan and where its weak points might be. I’ll be back tomorrow to offer some solutions to the common problems with disaster recovery plans that we see every day.
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