Planning your BC/DR Strategy You’re Doing it Backwards Nick Cavalancia Technical Evangelist Conversational Geek

Nick Cavalancia Technical Evangelist Certifications: MCSE/MCT/MCNE/MCNI Co-Founder of Conversational Geek Founder of Techvangelism Consultant/Trainer/Speaker/Author Technical author with over a dozen books Technical speaker for Techmentor, Connections Regular speaker for 1105 Media, Penton, Spiceworks Writes, Speaks, and Blogs for some of today’s best- known tech companies

The Challenge of BC/dr planning

The Challenge of BC/dr planning On-Prem, Hybrid-Cloud, Cloud Ever-increasing data Physical, Virtual, Container Every “aaS” under the sun RTOs, RPOs Complex mutli-tiered applications Capex, Opex concerns

What’s THE REAL PROBLEM? Apps Systems Criticality RTO/RPO Data Set Recovery Methods Defines Delivery

What’s THE REAL PROBLEM? Lots of pressures put on IT Less about recovery, more about continuity Larger data sets Smaller backup/recovery windows Improved cost-benefit ratios Digital Transformation Defining delivery based on tech won’t/doesn’t scale

You have an Availability gap “The distance between what your backup (tech) can deliver and the availability needs of the organization” Starting with tech is backwards thinking & creates the gap

STEP 1: Start with the business needs What defines the business as being operational? Identify key applications, services Ask business questions like: “How is the business impacted if this app is unavailable?” “How long can the business be without this app/service?” 50K’

STEP 1: Start with the business needs Involves many more people than you think C-Suite Department Heads LOB Owners Application Owners Power Users 50K’

Step 2: Identify recovery objectives Define values for each of the apps/services defined in step 1 RTO RPO MTPoD Define these based on the business need (regardless of whether you can deliver on them today or not!)

STEP 3: Create recovery tiers Purely an organization exercise Group by objectives and/or criticality These will likely require the same tech to meet the objective

Step 4: build a recovery strategy Should revolve around available technology Considerations Dependencies The disaster you’re planning for On-Prem vs Cloud (source and target) Leveraging Hyperconvergence/Replication Use of IaaS, BUaaS, and DRaaS

Step 5: assess & Address your availability gap Compare what you can deliver vs what you need to deliver Needed and possible recovery objectives (RTO, RPO) Impact on the business (MTPoD) Determine needed technology to close the gap

Step 6: Testing (and more testing) Think continuous, not frequent Testing at several levels: Backups Application dependencies Recovery environments Failover Failback

Turning your bc/dr strategy on its head Apps Systems Criticality RTO/RPO Data Set Recovery Stragegy Defines Delivery

Turning your bc/dr strategy on its head Define Delivery Identify Apps Systems Develop RTO/RPO Recovery Tiers / Criticality Define Data Sets Recovery Strategy

Turning your bc/dr strategy on its head Define Delivery Identify Apps Systems Develop RTO/RPO Recovery Tiers / Criticality Define Data Sets Recovery Strategy Continuous Testing

QUESTIONS?