Developing the right disaster recovery plan for your small business

A robust disaster recovery (DR) plan will ensure you have a structured method available for dealing with unplanned issues that interrupt your office IT network.

It will take into account how to rescue your computers, software platforms and applications, and networking hardware, as well as how to get your business processes and employees back in good order after a storm, flood, fire, or office break in.

That may sound like a lot to deal with, but thanks to well-established standards in the IT industry -- and the expertise that Managed Service Providers (MSPs) like OC-IT provide to small businesses -- developing the right disaster recovery plan for your company isn’t too hard.

Why you need a disaster recovery plan

Natural and manmade disasters don’t generally announce the precise time at which they’ll arrive, so a DR plan is like a lever to pull when an emergency befalls your business.

Without one, those emergency situations can spiral out of control. An otherwise minor downtime event -- caused by a thunderstorm, for example -- can turn into a prolonged technology collapse if there’s no clear outline of how to get servers and systems back online quickly.

So let’s take a look at the things your DR plan should include so you’ll be prepared to minimize the negative effects of a disaster on your company’s operations.

What does the ideal DR entail

Every good disaster recovery plan starts and ends with a detailed document. Yours should do a few important things:

1. Identify the IT systems and software that are most crucial to your operations.
2. Establish a clear Recovery Time Objective (RTO), which is the maximum amount of time your business processes can be down before you violate customer SLAs.
3. Detail all the procedures needed to restart, reconfigure, and reestablish your systems to meet your RTO.

But before a natural or manmade incident strikes your business, you need to consider which ones are actually possible, the risks associated with each one, and how to respond to the immediate trauma inflicted by any of them. This requires an IT infrastructure risk assessment, and here is the US government’s take on evaluating hazards, assets at risk, and impacts.

How to develop your DR plan

Your organization’s RTO will be determined by department managers, and the steps for returning your systems and software to pre-disaster performance levels should be assigned to specific personnel.

Here are some of the things you’ll need to do to develop the document that will serve as your DR plan:

• Highlight your RTO and RPO, or Recovery Point Objective, which is how far back you can afford to go before reaching your last data backup.
• Describe in detail the contact information for relevant vendors (such as the power company, phone company, cloud data provider, and insurance company).
• Locate the user manuals and licensing certificates for the relevant production servers, databases, software apps, and networking equipment.
• Lay out a clear sequence of action that designates specific personnel to each task.
• Review the details of your plan with department managers to make sure their personnel are being called upon appropriately and nothing has been overlooked.

Considerations after DR plan development

Editing down your document is a good idea if it has reached dozens of pages in length. The ideal DR plan should be simple and provide clear instructions to anyone in your organization.

Then it should be reviewed with leaders of each business unit. If it contains current, accurate information that’s easy to follow -- as in, it is obvious which levers should be pulled, in what order, and by whom after disaster has struck -- then your DR plan will help you successfully overcome unplanned IT interruptions.

And, if you’re an Orange County business and need assistance with any aspect of your DR plan development, don’t hesitate to contact OC-IT.