Disaster Recovery Documentation

Disaster recovery documentation is critical to your business continuity success without documenting everything involved in the process you undoubtedly leave hole. And you know what they say about Murphy, what can go wrong, will go wrong.

Disaster recovery documentation - Document systems

The basic steps of developing a disaster recovery plan are the same for any organization. First, define the disaster. This could range from the complete destruction of your main facility to loss of key personnel . If that is too overwhelming a disaster to consider, think of what will be the most painful event the organization could survive.

Next, it is important to get an understanding of the systems in place: an inventory of hardware, software, business systems, and all the interactions the systems enable. You have to understand the systems from a whole new perspective--from the point of view of the business. What part of the technology is critical to operations?

Disaster recovery documentation – Documentation is critical to your survival

Create a simple chart of the systems used by the organization: how they are installed, where the installation CDs are located, how they are backed up, and how to get support.

Undocumented complexity is the big problem here, and this can be fatal in recovering from a disaster.

Disaster recovery documentation – simple steps

These simple steps can eliminate the complexity in most organizations:

• Standardize all of the desktops!
• Document the exceptions.
• Store all the data on the servers!
• Document the exceptions.
• Document everything!
• No exceptions

When you follow these simple rules, not only is recovery simpler, but so are everyday operations.

Disaster recovery documentation - Back up your systems!

Once you have defined the disaster and gotten an understanding of your systems, you should then ask yourself:

• Which systems are critical?
• How are the systems backed up?
• How are the systems recovered?

Many organizations have a good backup strategy for at least a portion of their systems, but even if your organization has a rigorous system of backups, without a plan for recovery, you may face insurmountable challenges to recover the systems.