JTC Event – Building a Disaster Recovery Guide
This is part of a series of notes from the Alberta Education, School Technology Branch, semi-annual conference called the Jurisdiction Technology Contacts event. This particular one was held at Mount Royal, November 27-28, 2013. These notes are my own.
Jason Bischoff
Reliant Technologies Solutions group
DR Planning Guide Project Roadmap
What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
It is NOT:
- Business Continuity
- Backup schedule
- A Technology Architecture (Clustering & Resiliency
It is:
- A documented process for dealing with IT incidents and restoring services
- Regularly tested
- Maintained with each change
Developing and Using a Disaster Recovery Plan
- Planning
- Normal Operations, Testing & Evolution
- Outage Occurs, Operations are Disrupted
- Disaster Declared
- Team Assembles, Plan Executed
- Running in Recovered Business Operations
- Restore to Normal Business Operations
It’s an Evolutionary Process
- Keep the scope manageable – focus on your most critical items and add to it over time
- Manage your risks
- It is only through testing that you evolve a plan that works
Creating a DR plan consumes valuable resources…
As professionals we must:
- Respect the needs of the business
- Inform, not fear-monger
- Ensure the business is engaged, and “Informed” decisions are made
- Start with the most critical items first.
Some questions to consider:
Is it important to have a DR plan?
What will provide value to you and your team through this project?
Current challenges and pain points in building and maintaining a plan?
What is the ultimate goal?
Reliability
Preparedness
Confidence
Execution without panic
Disaster Scenarios
Risk Assessment: What to plan for?
– Fire
– Flood
– Electrical outage
– Pandemic
– Building Access
Define Recovery requirements
Facilitate the Informed Choices
Define the Recovery Plan
When do you declare a disaster?
How do you recover the services?
Who needs to be involved when?
The Value of having a DR Plan
ITIL process maturity (Change / Release)
IT Operations efficiency and better documentation
Better relationships with your organization
Show your leadership that you have a plan
You can recover your systems in the event of an outage / disaster.
Elements of a DR Plan
- Discovery – What needs to be recovered?
- Requirements – Business Defined
- Technology Solution
- Technical Readiness
- Business Readiness
- Testing
- Ongoing Maintenance
mrtoddkennedy 