Disaster Recovery Planning
Close the gap between your DR capabilities and service continuity requirements.
RETIRED CONTENT
Please note that the content on this page is retired. This content is not maintained and may contain information or links that are out of date.Common DRP challenges include:
- Misalignment with business needs, leading to higher costs or under-provisioning.
- Focusing on major disasters, and lacking an appropriate response to less-obvious disasters.
- Lack of testing, and therefore lack of confidence in the plan.
- No analysis of what’s required to improve recovery times.
Outcome of this workshop:
- DR requirements grounded in a business impact analysis.
- Incident response procedures for minor to major events.
- Gap analysis derived from step-by-step DR walkthrough.
- DR technology and process improvement roadmap.
Book Your Workshop
Onsite Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn’t enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our Project Workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a road map in place to complete your project successfully.
Case Studies and Deliverables
Right-Sizing DRP Case Study of a State Government Agency
Increasing complexity within the environment, with competing priorities within the organization, made it challenging to create an actionable DRP or even to know where to start.
DRP Workshop Summary for a Mid-Sized Insurance Company
The existing Business Continuity Plan lacked the specific details of a step-by-step incident response plan, and failed to account for all potential disaster scenarios. IT needed direction and focus to work through those details and create a workable disaster recovery plan.
DRP Case Study of a Global Chemical Manufacturing Firm
The Americas IT department of a global chemical manufacturing firm had made significant strides in building redundancy and resiliency within the environment. However, little had been done to define, assess, and prioritize recovery objectives or document recovery plans.
DRP Case Study of a Large Tourism Complex
A large American tourism complex had some system backup capabilities, but no disaster recovery plan (DRP). The data center was housed in a 90-year-old wooden building with a tar and gravel roof prone to leaks. Failure to develop disaster prevention and recovery plans will leave the organization in a precarious position should any incident affect the data center.
DRP Case Study of a Mid-Sized Credit Union
A highly-virtualized credit union located in the eastern US has made great strides in building redundancy in the main data center. However, apart from two major applications, the company was unprepared for a major disaster – lending and user connectivity systems would be down for 5-7 days, with full functionality hampered for weeks. An assessment of risk and downtime costs needed to be completed to ensure that appropriate plan and process in place to address the risk of unplanned downtime.
Module 1: Assess the current state
The Purpose
- A prioritized list of mission critical applications.
- Critical application dependencies identified.
- Summary of current DR challenges.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Prioritize DR efforts.
- Prevent cracks in DR strategy by accounting for dependencies.
- Address current DR challenges as we go through the remainder of the workshop.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | Identify mission critical business activities and applications |
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| 1.2 | Identify dependencies |
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| 1.3 | Identify current DR capabilities and challenges |
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Module 2: Determine recovery time requirements
The Purpose
- Estimated cost of downtime for specific mission critical applications.
- RPOs and RTOs based on business impact.
- A BIA Tool with your estimates for future evaluations.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Rationalize investment in high availability and DR technology.
- Prioritize DR efforts based on business impact, not perceived importance.
- Conduct future BIAs when your environment and business needs change.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
|---|---|---|
| 2.1 | Understand BIA goals and benefits |
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| 2.2 | Estimate the business impact of downtime |
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| 2.3 | Define RPOs and RTOs based on the BIA |
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Module 3: Close the Technology Gap
The Purpose
- A DR gap analysis.
- Risk/impact analysis that highlights likely points of failure that need to be addressed.
- A prioritized list of technology enhancements to address DR gaps and risk areas.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Communicate DR gaps and business risks in a meaningful way.
- Make appropriate, right-sized technology decisions based on risks and DR requirements.
- Implement a plan to address risks and DR gaps.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | Identify risks of failure in your infrastructure |
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| 3.2 | Use tabletop planning to identify DR gaps |
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| 3.3 | Create a DR technology roadmap |
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Module 4: Close the Process Gap
The Purpose
- An incident response plan that addresses DR gaps uncovered by the tabletop planning exercise.
- A clear escalation path and timeline from event to declaring the disaster.
- A plan to formalize IT processes with service continuity in mind, from change management to capacity planning.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Ensure DR and everyday IT processes align with service continuity objectives.
- Efficiently manage DR incidents from relatively minor events (e.g. hardware failure) to major disasters.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
|---|---|---|
| 4.1 | Create an incident response plan |
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| 4.2 | Align service management with DR |
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| 4.3 | Identify other process gaps |
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Module 5: Validate Technology and Process Changes
The Purpose
- DR process and technology plan validation.
- An understanding of business continuity risks beyond technology considerations.
- Action items to follow-up on proposed process and technology changes.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Initiate process changes to meet DR and service continuity objectives.
- Propose a DR technology roadmap to the Executive Team backed by a business impact analysis and a disaster scenario walkthrough.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
|---|---|---|
| 5.1 | Use tabletop testing to validate DR changes |
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| 5.2 | Lay the foundation for BCP |
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| 5.3 | Workshop wrap-up |
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