In this day and age, computer systems have become absolutely essential to the efficient operation of companies worldwide. In fact, they have become basically essential for businesses to run, period. We have become so reliant on computer technology today that we pretty much can’t run without them. So what happens when your computer and network systems fail? What happens when all of a sudden everything that you put so much reliance and belief in suddenly fails you? Do you sink to your knees and say “why me?” Or do you simply pull out your USB stick and get everything going again with your back plan? Ok. It’s not quite that simple, but it COULD be!
Having a disaster recovery plan, or DRP, really is essential to any company that runs computer hardware systems. There are a few different ways that a company should be backing up their systems. First, they should have something physically separate from the system with the configurations of the system. It can take a long time to configure all of your hardware, and if something happens to those configurations, you could be spending a lot more time than you need to get up and running again. This can be done in a few ways: through an online backup, or by means of a VMware machine. There are benefits and drawbacks to all of these ways, but in reality, you should be using all three!
The benefits of an online backup or server backup are that your data can be stored in another separate server, somewhere across the distant net. This means that it is separate from your network, and won’t be affected in case of a crash. By storing your information, or even entire configuration, you can immediately turn it on if the other one fails. This is simple redundancy, and essential to any DRP. The drawback is that it may be more difficult to access if your network goes down.
Finally, the VMware machine is a great way to back up your server configurations. It is like creating a virtual copy of the hardware, meaning that you could simply plug in that USB thumb drive and copy the configuration to your servers in case the data somehow gets erased.
Creating a DRP is a little complicated. You first need to analyze your networks. See what the risks are, and what could affect it. Then you give grades of severity to them, from low to high, on probability of it happening, and the impact it would have. After you categorize everything, simply see what you can do to prevent it and the costs involved. Remember that it’s infinitely preferable to spend money on prevention than spending money on recovery.
Creating a DRP is absolutely essential to the function of not only your network, but also your business. Although it can be a little bit confusing, creating a DRP can help you infinitely, even to the point of stopping your business from going under.