A robust disaster recovery plan allows you to resume operations as quickly as possible following a disruptive event. This can help you avoid a loss of revenue or customer trust, while also limiting damage to the brand image. It’s important to remember that even brief downtimes can harm a business, especially in today’s hyper-connected world where customers expect seamless service at all times.
To develop a comprehensive DR plan, you’ll need to identify your risks and recovery goals. This includes determining RTO and RPO, which refer to the amount of time your systems can go down without doing significant or irreparable damage. This can be based on several factors, including your company’s industry and region. It’s also important to determine the most critical applications and data for your company, as well as identifying any dependencies between them.You’ll then need to choose a recovery location, which is where your business’s applications and data will be stored during a disaster. For some businesses, this is a secondary site that has mirrored systems and data, while others select a DR as a service option where they host their infrastructure backup on virtual servers in a remote location.The best DR solutions provide near-zero data loss during disruptions. These solutions can replicate your applications and data to a secondary site almost instantly, preventing any lost revenue or performance in the event of a disaster. In addition, they can minimize overall damage by reducing beyond-IT costs like customer satisfaction, brand image and employee productivity.