Do you have a Disaster Recovery Plan for your IT Systems?

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As IT Systems have become increasingly critical and necessary to the smooth operation of a company or an organisation, the importance of ensuring the continued operation of those systems, or the rapid recovery of the systems after a mishap, has increased.

Planning for continuation or recovery of systems needs to be taken very seriously. This involves a significant investment of time and money with the aim of ensuring minimal losses in the event of a disruptive event.  Disasters can be as extreme as an earthquake, flood, fire or other natural calamity but others can be an act of sabotage, theft, arson, internal power failure, IT system failure, cyber crime or simply human error.

From an IT perspective, much of disaster planning revolves around data back-up and recovery processes. Remember that anything that takes a network down for a couple of hours (or affects the boss’s computer) qualifies as “the mother of all disasters”. Following the disaster, the highest-priority task is to get the business-critical systems running again as quickly as possible.

GDK have been supporting organisations with their IT systems for over 20 years and we are in the business of implementing Backup and Recovery Processes to maintain business continuity in this digital age.  

Here we summarise our 5 Disaster Recovery Tips for your Plan:

  1. Obtain Top Management Commitment and Support
    to ensure that adequate personnel, time and financial resources are allocated to this project.
  2. Draw up a Plan with a Risk Assessment
    showing the business impact analysis of the potential consequences from the loss of information and services. It should detail what is expected from the employees or third party contractors in the disaster recovery program to help the company recover it’s information systems and business operations as quickly and effectively as possible.
  3. Implement a Data Backup system that will cater for all your IT systems and data.
    Tapes     and Tape Backups are no longer a viable backup– they are history!!!
    Over the years, as data has grown, storage needs have exploded. Data can be stored on multiple servers, workstations, laptops, virtual machines and also somewhere in the cloud – all in different locations. Due to advances in technology, we now have disk imaging and bare-metal restore, which means you can restore your backed up data to other hardware in a seamless fashion.
    Our recommendation is to install the Acronis Backup & Recovery System
  4. Test the Backup and Restore/Recovery procedures
    and provide Training. Testing the plan identifies planning gaps, whereas training prepares recovery personnel for plan activation. Plan for periodic mock drills and for periodic updates to ensure that new systems, new servers, new workstations and programs are backed up.
  5. Document the Backup and Restore Procedures
    Document, document, document! Make sure that the whole recovery process to get you up and running again is documented, and that it includes the locations of system recovery and other critical discs. Make sure that key staff are familiar with these procedures.

Why is Acronis is the Obvious Choice?   In summary it provides:   

  • Fast and reliable recovery of live machines in just minutes or even seconds
  • Disaster Recovery and Data Protection now in one solution
  • One complete solution for all types of environments, platforms and media
  • A smooth transition from physical to virtual to cloud environments
  • Reduplication to free up storage space and enhance productivity
  • Enterprise-class features made accessible to organisations without dedicated IT resources
  • A flexible range of product support offerings protecting your software investment

If you would like to discuss a Disaster Recovery Plan for your IT Systems or if you would like a free site survey, please contact me on 01-2166 970 or email me at  sales@gdk.ie

P.S.  In the last two years we are aware of two companies that have had an infrastructure failure and the subsequent tape restore solution failed. These companies ultimately went into receivership as they never recovered from the data loss. They paid the ultimate price for not having their disaster recovery plan and processes in place. The importance of Disaster Recovery Planning and testing is something in today’s environment that you simply cannot afford to dismiss.
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