How to build realistic disaster recovery options

Computerworld - Businesses have placed a greater emphasis on disaster recovery efforts since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Recovery managers are faced with the challenging task of ensuring that they can recover company data in the event of such a crisis. But often there is no budget to accomplish this daunting task. So we have to set realistic expectations to achieve our goals and help company leaders understand the disaster recovery process.

Herein lies the foremost challenge for the recovery manager. Let's call it "Disaster Recovery 101." The recovery manager has to educate upper management on what recovery options are available, the potential costs and the financial impact of a disaster, should one occur.

Skip the dazzle, use numbers that matter

First of all, don't attempt to dazzle executives with charts and graphs on what percentage of outages have occurred based on various types of disasters throughout the country. Any good executive is already familiar with these statistics.

Instead, focus on the top executive's areas of responsibilities -- the business units or lines of business. The recovery manager should be able to show the company's leaders the response time objectives (RTO), recovery options that will deliver that response time and the costs associated with those recovery options. Then, the recovery manager needs to show what impact the outages would have on the business, including financial loss vs. the cost of delivering the solution. In doing so, you are building a framework to help executives understand the expectations.

Additionally, you should stress the importance of protecting and preserving data, not only for the company, but for shareholders as well. Unfortunately, it seems that only after a catastrophe does disaster recovery or business-continuity planning receive heightened awareness in terms of resources or capital.

Life cycle methodology

Ideally, disaster recovery planning has to be a way of thinking, and I believe this is a universal approach that can be achieved by using seven key steps. For purposes of clarity, I have linked them together as rectangular boxes. Each one is dependent on the other. Bear in mind, that although there are interdependencies, each one can and should be managed as a separate project.

Seven Steps to Disaster Recovery Planning:

One of the caveats of this program is that it will give you an accurate assessment or benchmark of the current situation. This is the benchmark you should use to ensure your validation criteria when you do your test scenarios.

Your company should try and leverage its in-house expertise in implementing a recovery solution, when possible. The reason is simple: Your team already knows the tools and methodology, what resources are needed and available, the business unit methodology and metrics. This will allow you the luxury of jump-starting your project.