Disaster Recovery Business Continuity for Remote Offices - Data
residing outside the data center at remote and branch offices (ROBOs) accounts
for a significant portion of an enterprise's information store, yet it often
either is protected with inefficient backup processes or is not protected at all
-- leaving companies at risk on many fronts.
In a recent
research report, high priority projects for ROBOs included improving information
security measures; ensuring compliance with government, industry or corporate
governance mandates; and improving Disaster Recovery Business
Continuity processes.
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Disaster Plan & Business Continuity Infrastructure - 
The key technology
elements of a Disaster Recovery Plan and Business Continuity Plan (DRP/BCP)
infrastructure are the primary data center, a remote site that duplicates the
resources in that primary location and the method used to get files (master and
transaction) between the two sites - such as high-bandwidth network
connections. The best DRP/BCP strategies follow a "redundant every-thing"
philosophy throughout the data center. Multiple mainframes and servers should
run in the production and backup data facilities. Then, if a component in the
production system encounters problems, it immediately fails over to the local
backup as a first line of defense.
Power supplies and communication links are one of
the most critical components in a DRP/BCP strategy.
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Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPOD) is an issue -
The concept
of Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPOD) is an issue with the
introduction of British Standard 25999-2. When applied appropriately, MTPOD will
improve management's understanding of your disaster recovery business continuity
program and clarifies your enterprise's recovery priorities.
BS 25999-2,
Section 4 says that the goal of a business impact analysis is to
"determine the impact of any disruption of the activities that support the
organization's key products and services." A key aspect of determining the
impact of a disruption is identifying what BS 25999 calls the "Maximum Tolerable
Period of Disruption," or MTPOD. BS 25999 defines MTPOD as the "duration after
which an organization's viability will be irrevocably threatened if product and
service delivery cannot be resumed." MTPOD is the maximum amount of time
that the organization's key products or services can be unavailable or
undeliverable before its stakeholders realize unacceptable
consequences.
The full
application of this concept can mean rethinking how a business impact analysis is
approached. While many DRP / BCP professionals start a business impact
analysis by gathering data from individual departments, MTPOD
forces them to first look at products and services. Disaster Recovery and
Business continuity professionals should understand downtime tolerance, taking
into account:
Based on
management input, disaster recovery / business continuity professionals can
propose preliminary Maximum Tolerable Periods of Disruption for key products or
services within the scope of the business continuity program.
Once MTPOD
is established for key products and services, the traditional business impact analysis or
service. From there, the business
impact analysis can either validate or disagree with preliminary
MTPOD conclusions. In addition, the business impact
analysis does identify the department, function and process
details that are needed to achieve the MTPOD.
Perhaps
most importantly, the disaster recovery / business continuity professional must
understand the amount of time required to perform the process or activity in
order to deliver the product or service to its key stakeholders (internal or
external). This is referred to as cycle time. For example, in a
manufacturing company, cycle time would be how long it takes to obtain the
necessary stock, manufacture the product, and deliver it to the
customer.
With
an understanding of MTPOD and cycle time, the business continuity professional
can identify what is commonly accepted as the core output of the business impact
analysis - the recovery time objective, or RTO. RTO is the point
in time following a disruption when operations must resume (at a minimum level)
in order to meet downtime tolerances.
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Defining a Functional Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Plan - What makes
a truly functional
disaster recovery business continuity solution is the ability to restore
full systems and enterprise operations quickly, in a matter of hours or even
minutes, using available computing resources, which may be local, but may also
be remote.
True disaster recovery and
business continuity plans must allow for recovery from site-wide disasters,
such as a hurricane. The primary site may be completely down, due to a lack of
power and network connectivity. The secondary site located in a non-affected
area would be used to restore services until the primary site comes back online.
Many
enterprises opt for remote Disaster Recovery
Business Continuity site(s) for such scenarios. Many system administrators
opt for virtual servers, which use asynchronous replication to replicate both
the data and virtual machines to the secondary site, which has several standby
servers. That way if they need to activate the secondary site, they just direct
the activity to the virtual machines and all the systems are back up and running
with the latest data.
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Template Tools for CIOs - Disaster planning is an essential component of preserving your
institutions collections. With a written disaster plan, libraries, archives,
museums, historical societies, and other collection-holding institutions can
reduce the risk of disaster and minimize losses. dPlan is perfect for small and
medium-sized institutions that do not have in-house preservation staff. dPlan is
also valuable for large library systems or museum campuses that need to develop
separate but related plans for multiple buildings, locations, or branches.
The Janco Disaster
Recovery / Business Continuity Plan Template can help you create a plan for
disaster prevention and response. This template will help you:
-
Prepare for the most likely
emergencies,
-
Respond quickly to minimize damage
if disaster strikes, and
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Recover effectively from
disaster while continuing to provide services to your community.
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