Disaster Recovery

Hurricane Katrina taught us a lesson. Disaster recovery is important! Hopefully we will never again have to experience the devastation that this natural event wreaked upon us. However, that event got many businesses thinking - "How safe is my data?" This article provides some basic steps that will help you recover your business's data in case of a disaster.

How much data are you willing to lose? It may sound like a dumb question but it will help you determine your disaster recovery strategy. For example, many financial institutions use a technique called data mirroring or data shadowing. Every time a transaction is written, that same transaction is written to another disk at another location. For example, if your business is in New York City, a copy of your data is written or mirrored to a site in Philadelphia or wherever your backup site is located. If your business suffers physical damage, you have up-to-date data at another location. In theory, only the transaction being processed at the time of the disaster is lost.

This process is costly; you need to either purchase or rent extra computer equipment. You also need to enter into a contract with a company that provides data storage. Obviously this may not be cost-effective for your company. So, how much data are you willing to lose?

How often does your business backup its data? Every hour? Twice a day? Once a day? Once a week? Your backup schedule answers the previously asked question. If you backup twice a day you are willing to lose half a day's worth of data. If you only backup weekly, you are willing to lose a week's worth of data.

Backing up is extremely important. However, if your office is damaged, what about your backup media?

Store your data at an off-site facility. There are many companies that provide archiving and storage services.
Be smart. Choose a facility at least 50 miles or so from your office. If there is a flood in your community, you don't want your� storage facility in the same town or city.