In case of a major network failure, a sound disaster recovery strategy can make the difference between a glitch in business continuity and a calamity. Fintech's IT consultants can help you with the three key elements of a disaster recovery program:
Developing a Disaster Recovery Plan
Disaster recovery planning should address the IT resources needed to maintain business continuity and restore full network functionality with minimal loss of productivity. The plan should anticipate a broad variety of disaster scenarios such as fires, storms, earthquakes, chemical accidents, flooding, loss of key personnel, equipment or system failure, and cyber crime.
You should assess the worst-case impact of each of these disaster scenarios on your network infrastructure and business processes and prioritize the areas that are most critical for you to protect in order to limit business disruption to an acceptable level. For each scenario, you should develop a recovery strategy that addresses your local and remote workers, customers, vendors, facilities, hardware and software, communication services, support contracts, and lead-times for replacing equipment and services and restoring data. Your recovery strategies should include specific action plans, escalation procedures, and data retention and restoration policies.
Building a Resilient Network Architecture
Network architecture is a crucial element of a disaster recovery strategy because some architectures are far more vulnerable to certain disaster scenarios than others. Resilient architectures are not necessarily more expensive than vulnerable ones and often provide higher performance and availability even in the course of normal, day-to-day operations. For example, if a business has five offices and maintains an in-house data center at the main office, then a fire at the data center effectively shuts down all five offices. Using a remote Data Center or multiple remote Data Centers could not only provide better protection from certain types of disasters but could also offer dramatically faster and more reliable Internet access to the entire business.
Testing a Disaster Recovery Plan
Testing and adjusting recovery plans for specific anticipated scenarios is another critical element of a viable disaster recovery program. The complexity of fault-tolerant networks requires rigorous testing to verify that a recovery plan is feasible and that assigned responsibilities are understood. Recovery exercises will show whether backed-up data can be usefully restored, alternative connectivity technology provides adequate performance under realistic loads, fault-tolerant technologies perform failover processes as planned, and IT staff knows what is expected. Testing exercises will help you identify weak points in your recovery plan so that you can make adjustments before disaster strikes.
Fintech's disaster recovery consultants can help you create recovery plans, design a fault-tolerant network infrastructure, and conduct realistic test exercises.
In addition to disaster recovery consulting, Fintech's Microsoft and Cisco-certified experts can help you create an affordable, fault-tolerant network solution that addresses other critical issues covering a broad range of infrastructure technologies and processes including:
