Disaster recovery plan

[rasczak]

aside from data recovery, what else should I look to include in a DRP? I've got to write up a plan for the network i'm currently administering (just brought it online two weeks ago) but i'm stuck as far as what to include. this is my first SA job so that's pretty much why i don't know what to write.

Thanks in advance!

Joe

 

[Smilin]

Your site just got nuked. What services do you need to keep shipping products out the door?

Infrastructure? DNS, DHCP, Active Directory?
Applications: internal apps, web sites, external websites?

Be sure to include dissimilar hardware restoration in your planning. You can't count on your servers being available after a disaster. You should plan on having a box of tapes from your offsite tucked under your arm and nothing else.

Also be sure to include TESTING in your DR plans. Once or twice a year you should be doing a restore excercise in a lab for your all core infrastructure + one or two mission critical systems (rotate and do a different system each test).

 

[rasczak]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Your site just got nuked. What services do you need to keep shipping products out the door?

Infrastructure? DNS, DHCP, Active Directory?
Applications: internal apps, web sites, external websites?

Be sure to include dissimilar hardware restoration in your planning. You can't count on your servers being available after a disaster. You should plan on having a box of tapes from your offsite tucked under your arm and nothing else.

Also be sure to include TESTING in your DR plans. Once or twice a year you should be doing a restore excercise in a lab for your all core infrastructure + one or two mission critical systems (rotate and do a different system each test).

thank you! this is exactly what i was trying to come up with. trying to get a test server may prove to be a bit difficult, this is terrific information!

i have heard stories about windows backup, is it reliable? i have symantec ghost solution suite available to me but i can't make heads or tails of it at the moment.

 

[RebateMonger]

If you use backup software that has built-in dissimilar hardware capability, you can even run a pretty-good recovery test inside a Virtual Server window. Hey, at least you know you can always recover your Server to a laptop if necessary!

Originally posted by: rasczak
i have heard stories about windows backup, is it reliable? i have symantec ghost solution suite available to me but i can't make heads or tails of it at the moment.

I've use NTBackup where the data sizes aren't horrendous (about 200GB is a rough limit) and the client can stand having a broken server down for a day. As far as it goes, I've found NTBackup reliable. Meaning, I've never had a problem restoring a server from the backup.

It's missing a lot of important features, though:
Emailed error reporting
Compression (to a disk drive)
Encryption
Dissimilar hardware capability (Well, as long as you don't mind re-installing the entire OS and patching it to the same version as before as a prerequisite to restoring the backup, then you have dissimilar hardware capability). 😉

No matter what backup method you choose, test the result and understand exactly how the software works. I test the integrity of my NTBackup data at least monthly.