Acronis Presentation Review: Disaster Recovery Best Practices
Mark Jameson, the general director of Acronis Disaster Recovery, gives a highlight of disaster discovery challenges, business continuity, and disaster recovery processes. He also explains the best practices in disaster recovery and how Acronis Disaster Recovery has helped more than 50 million beneficiaries through such methods.
Disaster recovery challenges faced majorly require us to address questions such as when the disaster will occur? What was the real cause of the failure? And possible impacts and cost of a disaster to an organization. Businesses can build their disaster recovery plans, but these may be very expensive and unreliable. They may also face the challenge of limited resources to develop a sophisticated but effective plan. With this era of digitalization, discovery processes must address the issue of privacy, offer protection, and secure information.
To solve disaster recovery challenges, we require a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP).the plan incorporates information technology recovery, having an alternative site, data back up, and off-site replication. A DRP must align itself with the Business Continuity Plan of an organization. Business continuity is an ongoing lifecycle process of a business in all aspects, such as the infrastructure from manufacturing to IT personnel. Disaster recovery majorly focuses on IT assets of a company such as hardware, software, and IT personnel. In the small and mid-markets, disaster recovery planning involves risk management, business continuity plans, validation, and testing, among others. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Best practices in disaster recovery are those that support the goals of the business. The disaster recovery processes must align with the business continuity plan and consider all aspects of the organization. It should take into consideration what happens to all parties involved with the business in case of a disaster. It should take care of the entire business supply chain relationship. Secondly, a DRP must be an earlier plan . The set up should be available as early as the business begins its operations. It is planned by assuming the worst, overestimating the risk, and choosing more accessible paths. It gives time to criticize the plan and allow room for the DPR to evolve as the business grows.
It is crucial to also keep copies of the DRP document off-site. In case of a disaster, this ensures the DRP document is readily available. The information of the organization to be recovered should be secured in this manner. A replication process for all the databases required to be recovered during a disaster is another practice. It ensures there are enough backups and protection for important information. Those copies are then kept both onsite and the place of businesses and off-site, away from the business premises backing up and protecting onsite and off-site with multiple copies.
Automation is also vital to avoid asking people to show up to work in case of a disaster since they may not be available when needed most. Mark Jameson recommends using a push-button approach that assures the process will be automated and successful. Another practice is testing. It involves running the data recovery process and capturing all changes that are required. Testing must be done regularly. It is made easier by automating the testing process. It is also essential to carry out the ad-hoc test by running a live fail from another site to see if the disaster recovery would work in case of a disaster.
The other issue addressed in data recovery is security. There must be secure data centers with certifications that adhere to compliance. They should be encrypted and offer a traceable record that is secure. Lastly, it is important to choose the right IT Disaster Recovery partner. The solution provided by the selected company must fit the business and solve its IT needs. The partner should be experienced in offering reliable expertise to other companies that have undergone the disaster recovery process. They should have a good track record, use proven technologies, recognized by experts, and recommended by customers.