1. Disaster Planning and Recovery
By Jason Swoyer

2. A Business Impact Analysis
Analyze all Process Functions or Applications
Categorize them as Critical
Group them as Critical or Level if possible

3. Risk Analysis and Assessment
Perform a Risk Assessment of the Processing Site(s).
List Possible Disasters and associated Probabilities.
Look at possible Opportunities and also the costs.

4. Develop Data Recovery Strategy
Explore all possible options.
Eliminate all solutions that don’t meet all major requirements.
Develop a short list of possible solutions.
Finalize that short list.
Acquire Top Management Commitment to Proceed.

5. Develop Data Recovery Plan
Assemble and merge all procedures required to establish an alternate processing site in the event of a Disaster.
Establish a method of distributing, updating and protecting of this “plan”.
Develop a method of Exercising this “plan”.

6. Begin Development of DR Standards
Extremely important to Develop, Publish and Enforce Data Recovery
Must be appropriate and Enforceable.
Important to establish Accountability on all levels.

7. What is Disaster Recovery Planning?
An effort to eliminate avoidable disasters, and to minimize the consequences of disasters that can not be eliminated.
Typically assigned to IT personnel because it is more detail oriented.
Incorporates existing backup schemes.
Accounts for all types of disasters.
Usually conceived as a business project.

8. Why Plan???
Data Recovery Planning is a 21st Century Survival strategy.
Natural Disasters not more common, but more costly.
Business more dependant on technology infrastructure.
Individual acts can have far reaching consequences and costs.

9. Some Examples The WTC Bombing of 1993 The WTC disaster of 2002
450 tenants
147 non-recoverable
The WTC disaster of 2002
250 disaster declarations

10. Biggest Challenges Out of Date Data Recovery Plans.
Availability of skilled staff.
Hardware replacements.
Locating Tapes.
Replacement of Desktops.
Running business until recovery is complete (biggest challenge).

11. “DR” Plans (Questions to Ask)
Data Size
How many GB’s of data need backed up?
What is the average file size?
How big is the dataset?
Should all data be backed up, or just changed data?
Data Characteristics
What types of data in the dataset?
Is the data a file system?
Concurrency of data?

12. “DR” Plans (Questions to Ask)
Data Source
Is the data on a backup server?
Is the data on remote clients and how many?
What types of clients?
How are the data disks laid out and managed?
What are their capabilities?
Data Destination
Where do the tape devices reside?
How many tape drives are there?
Are all tapes on the master server?

13. “DR” Plans (Questions to Ask)
Data Transportation
Is the file system buffer cache used?
How much system memory is there?
What software is being used?
How much shared memory is available?
What kind of network is being used?
Backup Windows
How long is the backup window?
How often does data need to be backed up?
When are people less likely to need the data?

14. Backup Methods Traditional Backup (old)
Traditional Backup moves data across the LAN from the application host (with a backup agent) to the backup server and then to the backup device.
Backup Traffic can affect LAN performance.
Backup Hardware is connected to each individual server or backup server.

15. Backup Methods LAN-Free Backup
Moves data directly from the applications host (with a SAN backup agent) to the backup device.
Only meta data moves over the LAN.
Has centralized backup hardware which means reduced equipment and management costs.
Agents are deployed the same as with traditional backup.

16. Backup Methods Severless Backup
Requires Serverless Backup option in addition to SAN option.
Not all applications and applications support Serverless Backup.
Minimal impact on CPU.
Data mover transfers data directly from disk to tape.

17. Conclusion Traditional disaster recovery strategies are invalid.
Inappropriate to technology
Too costly to implement
Active planning strategies are required:
To build in, not bolt on, recoverability
Harness the strengths of new technology, and to minimize its weakness from a DR standpoint.
ALWAYS test and update!
Planners must
Be prepared and understand the new technology.