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The importance of disaster recovery planning is greatly underestimated by many companies. Regardless of the size or complexity of your business, technology and data play key roles in keeping a business profitable. Successful VMware disaster recovery plans have their own unique set of surprises and pitfalls. Companies spend a lot of capital on infrastructure hardware. However, when correctly configured, this technology can make the difference in recovering quickly from a disaster or suffering financial and reputational impacts.
Let’s take a look at the first two steps in creating a VMware disaster recovery plan. Disaster recovery planning projects can get expensive, but discovering some key requirements and expectations for your specific business will help you narrow down the focus to an affordable yet reliable disaster recovery planning solution.
Assessment – Identifying Goals
Assessment is the first step in VMware disaster recovery planning. You’ll need to identify two important factors to establish your company’s disaster recovery expectations. These factors are recovery point objective and recovery time objective, which we’ll refer to as RPO and RTO.
RPO is determined by establishing which business processes depend on technology to actually make a profit. Not every system may be critical for keeping the business running. In small companies it may be a single business process that needs to be maintained in the case of a disaster. In larger organizations, understanding all income flows and how dependent they are on technology may constitute a large project.
RTO is of course the time goal for recovering and getting things up and running. Can the business survive a few days without critical technology components? Can it survive only a few hours? Answering these questions will help you understand how much recovery technology will be needed. Once you’ve established these basic parameters, you’ll have a better idea of how much power you’ll need in your disaster recovery system.
Designing Your VMware Disaster Recovery Project
With RPO and RTO clearly defined, you can begin create a clear recovery plan. Usually infrastructure configuration changes will be required to support switching over to a disaster recovery system. Resource requirements must also be taken into consideration. Perhaps your disaster recovery system does not need the full power of your production environment to service, but is it sufficient to meet the RPO and RTO and keep profits coming in?
Don’t forget about the non-technical elements of a disaster recovery plan. You’ll need to identify key personnel and ways to contact them. Steps for restoring should be very clearly defined and easy to follow. Additionally, a good VMware disaster recovery plan has regularly scheduled tests defined to make sure the solution is actually viable and changes to the environment have not degraded it.
VMware makes it easy to move your entire configuration to a disaster recovery server. You won’t have to deal with traditional recovery issues like OS and hardware configuration. Although it simplifies the process, disasters can still surprise you when you do not have a well-rehearsed and proven plan.
Disaster Recovery – An Essential Component for Success
Disaster recovery systems are not a luxury. They are a necessity. It is not a question of if a disaster will happen, but when. Hardware fails, data becomes corrupted and natural disasters can happen at any time. Make sure your company is well protected with a properly scaled backup plan. Take the time to gather a clear understanding of your business processes and implement a plan that maintains your company’s critical processes. When disaster strikes, you will be ready.
AppAssure software has been rated #1 in Backup and Replication. Download a free 14-day fully functional trial of AppAssure software.
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