What are the 3 most important aspects of a disaster recovery plan (DR)? What is the difference between Failover and having high availability? Read more.

No matter how well established a business is, the danger of an unexpected interruption is always present. Natural disasters, digital attacks, fraud, systems failure or human mistakes can bring a business to the brink of distraction…literary within a few minutes.

As we have mentioned before, it is crucial for every organization to have a solid and well-tested business continuity and recovery plan against all possible disasters, against any occurrences.

As it happens, the disaster recovery plan has to follow specific principles, in order to be effective. Its “success” is based on a number of parameters, the main being:

  1. Ease of execution

A plan is never easy to follow unless it is as simple as possible. Simplicity reduces friction, “bureaucracy”, and increases the chances of everything goes well. After all, isn’t this the most important things during an ongoing disaster?

  1. Availability 100%

People and resources have to be 100% available at all times, during a crisis. It makes sense, this is the only way for a plan to be executed.

  1. Independence

Keeping information, data, and assets in different places reduces the chances of losing everything when disaster strikes. Physical and digital copies in multiple locations make it almost impossible to lose everything when the worst becomes a reality.

Of course, this is where Business Continuity and Colocation “come in handy”. Using these advanced services can make an organization a lot more agile, more flexible, and infuse actual redundancy in the operation process.

Terms to keep in mind

The process of setting up a disaster recovery plan requires a thorough understanding of the “vocabulary” involved.

Failover. This is the type of system which will replace a broken part of the “chain” not necessarily permanently but definitely for as long as it is needed to secure operations and have the main systems recovered.

To that, a failover may often require a Data Backup resource in order to function, although this is not necessary. Under all circumstances, Backup means all critical data are safely stored and easily accessible during the execution of a recovery plan.

Finally, we often see organizations confusing Failover with High Availability. The latter is a protocol enabling systems to reduce downtime as much as possible and restore operations as fast as possible, without having the need to access a Failover.

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