Top 4 Questions To Ask When Looking For The Right Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Solution

• Posted By Admin
• 06/05/2019

1. What are the goals and expectations when building out a plan for disaster recovery and business continuity solutions?
    
   Remember, this is YOUR data which runs YOUR business.  Before you start evaluating solutions - create a plan.  Start with an evaluation of systems and related data that are mission critical to your business.  Once you have that, ask how long your business could continue without access to that critical information.  There is no blanket answer to this question.  Some businesses can continue for longer periods of time than others.  The answers to these questions will help when trying to identify a solution that meets your specific business needs.
    
2. Does my business need disaster recovery AND business continuity capabilities?
    
   Disaster recovery and business continuity solutions are not necessarily the same.  Typical disaster recovery solutions are composed of an efficient backup and retention management solution as well as a method for restoring data in case of a disaster (dead server, hard drive failure, ransomware, natural disaster, etc.).  Business continuity is a solution that depends on the data that is being backed up.  A great and current example of when this type of solution would be invaluable is the current flooding happening in the central US.  If your business location was completely flooded, a business continuity solution would allow you to spin up your mission-critical systems quickly in the cloud or another data center from data that was being backed up.  You would have access to your systems remotely and could continue to operate even if your physical location was a total loss.  If a business continuity solution is not in place, your business may be looking at an extended period of time before servers, desktops, etc., can be replaced and then the data restored back to them.
    
3. Do employees store important information on their local machines?
    
   You may have a situation where important information is stored on an employee’s machine before being entered into a line of business application or stored temporarily for some other reason.  An extremely common scenario in a small business is to have a machine used by an accounting employee with a copy of <insert favorite accounting package here> installed and saving data locally.  Servers and major applications are normally easy to identify and include in disaster recovery and business continuity planning.  Don’t forget to evaluate your desktops and laptops as potential items to include.
    
4. How long does your business need to retain the data being backed up?
    
   The answer varies by industry.  Your business may also fall under certain compliance and regulation rules that would dictate the length of time to retain backups of your information.  The answer to this question may help guide your selection process so that the proper sizing and costs can be included in the planning and selection process.