Data Center Checklist for Recovering From Disaster

Datacenter disaster recovery plan is an absolute necessity to protect a company’s investment in communications, information technology and all other sensitive and vital information of the organization. It needs to be scalable and flexible so that it can face the damage caused by a disaster. Every company should have a data centre checklist, along with the suggested actions to recover from a disaster easily.

Here’s a checklist for recovering from a disaster:

·         A Well-Written Plan that Evolves with the Company

In case of any damage caused to the local backup systems and servers, devise a well structured plan to fall back on. Put that plan in a safe place such as online lockbox service and update it regularly.

·         Emergency Power 

The implementation of an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) system on systems and critical servers is a must which will permit for the smooth switching over from primary (utility) power to an emergency power system during an event of power outage.

·         Elevate storage systems and server level 

Be careful about the location of the IT systems to prevent damage to critical servers from the fire department, floods and bursting of pipes. The storage systems and servers should be stationed above the street level and the areas where water can accumulate, such as the basement should be avoided. For additional protection, the rack critical systems should be placed high above the floor level in single storey facilities.

·         Embrace Geographic Diversity

The data of the company should be backed up at a distant location to protect it from a local disaster, such as fire, regional disaster like earthquake or flood or a disaster of a greater proportion like a hurricane. Consideration of redundant off-site backup storage should be done and should be checked to see whether the system could be restored to a completely different kind of hardware. This backup should be present in case the local hardware is unreachable or entirely damaged.

·         Have a Local Backup

A local backup copy is absolutely necessary if the primary data centre has power but loses the internet connectivity and there is a requirement to recover data from the server.

·         Include Disaster Recovery Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Conduct Training Drills

Recovering policies and SLAs should be incorporated in a disaster recovery plan to assure that data can be recovered any time in the most productive way. Regular disaster recovery drills should be conducted and the IT staff should be trained adequately through such drills to ensure effective recovery of data in time of need.

·         Identify a Minimum of Three Business Site Failover Locations

This would permit the recovery of remotely backed up data through Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) to the servers at the recovery site location and enable the critical business operations to continue even if the primary data centre is lost.

·         Emergency website for Real-time information

An offsite emergency website is mandatory to which all the employees of the organization should have access. Real-time information is communicated to the employees with the help of this site.

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Conclusion

Careful consideration and assessment of the functions and risks involved in a data centre is vital while designing a data center    disaster recovery plan and with a well devised plan, damage to a data centre can be reduced considerably.