Disaster Recovery July 2015 Copyright, Ltd SITOC 2015 and StorageCraft SITOC Company Registration Number: 05278300 21-23 Croydon Road, Caterham, Surrey, CR3 6PA
Contents WHY YOU MIGHT BE PUTTING IT OFF... 3 SO WHAT, THEN, IS THE VALUE OF BACKUP AND DISASTER RECOVERY?... 4 WHERE DO YOU START?... 5 BUILD YOUR PLAN... 5 COMMUNICATE... 6 GET TESTY... 7 IT S ALL ABOUT THE SPEED... 7 DO IT TODAY... 8 AND SO... 8 WHY CHOOSE DISASTER RECOVERY SOLUTIONS THROUGH SITOC?... 9 Page 2 of 9
Why you need a Disaster Recovery plan Why you might be putting it off You may be naturally critical of the statistics that blast you on all sides: 90% of businesses losing data from a disaster are forced to shut down within two years. 1 The survival rate for companies without a disaster recovery plan is less than 10%. Only 44% [of businesses] successfully recovered information after a recent data recovery event. 2 53% of claimants never recoup the losses incurred by a disaster. 3 These statistics are valid, but they re vague. They re difficult to interpret, to compare; and they re easy to ignore. Intellectually you probably believe me that you need a plan. And yet, you still don t want to prioritise preparing your plan. It s not your fault. You are biologically wired to ignore the implications of doom-and-gloom statistics like these. Optimism helps you to get out of bed every morning. You may not ever be the victim of the next Hurricane Katrina, but I m willing to bet that you will suffer from some kind of event that interrupts your business, takes precious resources to resolve, and blocks customers from spending money on you. In fact, I m willing to bet that you already have. 1 Disaster Recovery. Computer 1. http://www.computer1products.com/disaster.html. Accessed on 7 March 2012. 2 DR by the Numbers. Zerto, 4 December 2011. http://www.zerto.com/blog/disaster-recovery-planning/dr-by-the-numbers/. 3 Disaster Recovery. DRS. http://www.disasterrecoverysolutions.co.uk/disaster-recovery. Accessed on 23 February 2012. Page 3 of 9
So what, then, is the value of backup and disaster recovery? First and foremost, if you re not taking backup and disaster recovery seriously these days, a small outage of a seemingly innocuous system might cause serious problems. Systems are just too intertwined for you to simply backup the stuff you think you ll need the most. If you accept that a disaster is anything that interrupts the normal operation of your business, then suddenly you start to see the real value of a disaster recovery plan. In addition, though, making a plan and streamlining your business opens the door for all kinds of disaster recovery goodness: Taking the time to evaluate your business is always a good thing. You can know how everything s working together, what s most important, and what s pulling you back. It puts you in a position to save time not only during a disaster, but in the maintenance of your data and applications as well. We all know that over the course of time, our lives and businesses get cluttered. The problem with clutter, however, is that it s terribly inefficient. Disaster recovery technologies can ease the backup process, introduce more automation, and free-up IT staff time. As you develop and implement a backup and disaster recovery solution, you ll find that when there is a disaster, whether it s a problem with your email or a downed powerline, you ll recover much more efficiently. There s no doubt that efficient companies save money. If you know what all your IT is doing and you ve organised things so that you re making the best use of what you have, you re not going to waste money on worthless cycles. When I say backup and disaster recovery helps you make money, I mean it. Having and implementing a solid backup and disaster recovery plan can help you keep your business running 24/7 so that you can make money doing what you do. Finally, depending on your industry, backup and disaster recovery might be the law. You should take time to understand any regulatory requirements placed on your business. Chances are they require some kind of backup or disaster recovery. Page 4 of 9
Where do you start? A realistic plan begins with a business impact analysis. To develop a realistic backup and disaster recovery plan, you must understand the potential hazards that could affect your business, as well as your business processes and technology needs. Ask yourself: What processes, components, and physical and human resources are required to run my business? What is the likelihood of disaster, both natural and otherwise, for my area? o How often do we have power outages? o How frequently does heavy rain cause flooding? o What other risks do I need to prepare for? What are my critical IT components? (Email, accounting, contact management, online ordering system, servers, workstations, etc.?) o How long could I do without each IT component? o How much does downtime really cost you? Do I have an alternative site where I could access my business data if something happens to my office? Which data and services absolutely must be online first? Because backed-up data is a crucial part of every disaster recovery plan, you also need to consider how you re backing up your data. It can take hours or even days to restore your data from backup tapes, while disk-based methods take only a few minutes. Build your plan Write a plan that tells you what to do, and where to go in an emergency. And, while you re at it, minimise your chances of experiencing an emergency with the following recommendations: Employ or extend management technologies that automate management, system configuration, and software distribution. This will reduce the number of steps that require hands-on intervention and reduce IT staff time. Use standard processors, operating systems, database products making it easier to maintain and update. Ad keep these to a manageable number. Consolidate servers over a long-term road map, reducing the complexity of maintenance and updates. Standardise IT practices, especially management of settings and configurations. Provide protected storage space within your organisation s storage resources and establish rules for the backup of mission-critical data. (This ensures adequate capacity for backup and recovery procedures and for restarting of applications. Developing your plan doesn t need to be a chore and it doesn t need to get in the way. Take your time, divvy up responsibilities, and keep asking those crucial questions. Ask the hard questions. And please don t forget people in your thought processes. This is not just about technology. Page 5 of 9
Most plans include backups for software and hardware, but backups for people and processes should also be included. What if you lose your bookkeeper? Does anyone else have the bank codes and passwords? What if you lose your admin? Who else has the extra key to the PO box? Who knows about billing and receipts, and where they are stored? What happens if your senior engineer dies, and he s the only one who knows all the software codes and passwords? Insure your key people and back up their knowledge and processes. Communicate Once you ve written your plan, make sure everyone in your organisation knows about it. Then, review it regularly. A lot can change in six months, so review your plan at least twice a year. The Information Technology Disaster Resource Center offers this checklist to see if your IT disaster recovery plan is complete: Inventory your technology hardware and software. Document your voice/telephone service, data circuit/ Internet service, web host/dns registrar, and email service information. Include the names and phone numbers of each of your service providers. Include your account numbers, usernames, and passwords for those services. Backup your critical business data locally and to an offsite location. Verify and test your restore process regularly. Document all of your essential business processes. Create vendor/supplier and employee contact lists and update them monthly. Identify two recovery sites, such as a hotel, a vendor s office, or even a relative s home. Subscribe to a severe weather alerting system via text, smartphone, or email. Maintain adequate disaster recovery supplies to support a family for three days. Consider VOIP or a hosted PBX phone service. Purchase a backup/satellite/mobile Internet service plan. Review your insurance policy for adequate business loss coverage of your data. Execute service-level agreements with key service providers, such as fuel, fleet services, and building repairs. Page 6 of 9
Get testy Don t let a disaster be the first true test of your disaster recovery plan. Real-life tests can often be more effective than a simple thought experiment. It s easy to overlook implications of a disaster when it s all in your head. By actually running a test, by really shutting things down, you can scare up holes in your plan that you might have never thought of. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) advocates a table-top exercise quarterly and a full-scale exercise annually to test your BDR plan. The Ultimate Guide to Business Continuity, from CSOonline.com, lists these tips for an effective table-top exercise: Decide how much gloom and doom you want. Test how quickly you can pull together key players. Involve everyone, and make sure each person has a role. Acknowledge that first-timers may be nervous. Encourage misinformation to better simulate reality. Take the lessons with you. You can t come up with the perfect plan the first time. You can t plan for all possible scenarios. But when it all comes tumbling down, you have to have a plan. It s all about the speed The total hourly cost of downtime is most likely a combination of lost sales, lost employee productivity, lost data, and lost customer confidence/satisfaction. From the hourly cost, you can extrapolate the annual cost of downtime and more accurately justify investments in new backup and disaster recovery tools and resources. Here s the Aberdeen formula for calculating the yearly impact of downtime on your company: # downtime events x average length in hours x cost per hour of downtime = yearly downtime cost Due to the high costs of downtime, rapid recovery must be the focus of your backup and disaster recovery plan. To recover quickly, consider: Cloud computing/hosted applications Cloud backup services Virtual servers and desktops Hosted telephone service Hosted fax service Mobile/wireless Internet connectivity Page 7 of 9
Do it today Any kind of backup and disaster recovery plan, even paper and pencil, is better than no plan. Here are five steps you can take today to start protecting your business data: Back up your most critical data offsite, even if it s to a thumb drive at your home. Copy your critical recovery files to cloud storage. Set up automatic backup of your bookkeeper s PC. Scan all important documents insurance policies, client contracts, supplier contracts, etc. and store them on a DVD. Put together a disaster recovery kit. The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends that a kit include: o Insurance policies o Fixed asset inventory o Contracts o Employee contact information o Software installation disks o Software licensing keys o Hardware serial numbers o Essential office supplies such as company letterhead o Emergency items such as water, first aid kit, flashlights and batteries, blankets, matches o Tools such as pliers, wrenches, screwdrivers and duct tape This list of suggestions for a kit is not exhaustive, of course, so be sure to plan for your specific needs. And so There is one key message here: you have to think about it. Disaster recovery doesn t come out of the blue. You need to take the time to actually plan, to think about your business and the possible threats to its operation. It s hard to tear yourself away from other tasks that may seem more important on the surface, but when the disaster strikes, nothing is as important to your business as your plan. Remember, any plan is better than no plan, so even if you start today and disaster strikes tomorrow, you ll be one step ahead, which means you ll recover that much faster. And there s nothing wrong with that. Page 8 of 9
Why choose disaster recovery solutions through SITOC? Not only can you be confident that the tools we provide, like StorageCraft s recoverability solutions, are the best that we are aware of, exceeding the requirements described above for security, speed and reliability. And many of the solutions we provide (like those from StorageCraft) are not available directly to the end user. But also, you get these tools within SITOC s proven support structure at no extra cost to you. And you have the backup of our expert engineers being the ones that are administering your infrastructure. These benefits include: Scheduled testing Guaranteed repair times Guaranteed service levels Remote administration and intervention Automated maintenance and updates 24/7 support available Full licence administration Advice and consultation Access to overlapping and complimentary solutions to build your resilience And, as this white paper shows, SITOC have a drive to provide all businesses, regardless of size, with the information they need to make the most out of their technology. Page 9 of 9