Data Center

3 Steps for Better Disaster Recovery

How schools can make sure that their disaster recovery plan covers all the correct bases.

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Calvin Hennick is a freelance journalist who specializes in business and technology writing. He is a contributor to the CDW family of technology magazines.

Without a proper disaster recovery plan, vendor Peak 10 warns, IT managers will often panic when things go wrong, making the situation worse.

The company suggests that organizations follow these three steps to set their DR planning in motion:

Step 1: Identify Crucial Data Requirements

Replicating all of an organization’s data can be prohibitively expensive. Therefore, data should be inventoried and classified to prioritize the organization’s most essential applications, processes and data.

Step 2: Calculate Risk and Recovery Objectives

While data center downtime always has a negative impact, different organizations face different risks. Organizations should outline possible costs associated with downtime, including lost revenue, regulatory fines, increased expenses and reputational damage. They should also assess each application’s vulnerability to events that can cause downtime.

Step 3: Match Technical Solutions to Objectives

Once organizations have a firm grasp on their crucial data, risk areas and recovery objectives, they can explore DR solutions that best meet their needs, including colocation facilities and cloud services.

For more on disaster recovery check out "Disaster Recovery Planning Helps Districts Weather More Than Storms."