Disaster Recovery Alternate Site

Disaster recovery alternate site planning is a detailed subject in itself. That is, you have put your entire process and plan together which now hinges on the selection of the alternate site or sites. What do you need to consider? Here is a list in no specific order of perhaps some of the things you should consider.

Disaster recovery alternate site Designing - Recovery Solutions

• Establishing a disaster recovery site
• Site choices: hot, warm, or cold standby
• Build vs. rent or share
• Choosing suppliers: in-house vs. third-party
• Specifying equipment
• Selecting backup and restore strategies
• Full, incremental and differential techniques
• Matching strategy to operational constraints
• Meeting the organization's storage requirements for paper and magnetic records
• Knowing your choices: high availability and non-stop solutions
• Storage backup and recovery tools
• Managing stored data and applications
• The impact of Storage Area Networks (SANs) on recovery provision
• Current trends in recovery
• Restoring communications and recovering users
• Determining vital users with the BIA
• Rerouting voice, mail, goods delivery
• Eliminating network single points of failure
• Connecting end users
• Meeting varied user-recovery needs

Disaster recovery alternate site - Managing and Documenting the Recovery

• Implementing a project management approach
• Identifying stakeholders
• Defining clear goals at the start
• Running the project
• Controlling the project via tracking
• Managing risks and issues
• Testing deliverables
• Ensuring normal developments are accounted for in the DR plan
• Scheduling regular reviews
• Applying document management discipline to the plan  

Please be aware that I am not focusing on the whole BCM process here, just one small slice of it!