Mapping out all the preparations necessary for an effective disaster recovery plan and its safeguard—a continuous maintenance program—this guide is aimed at IT managers of small and medium businesses. The opening section covers the initial steps of auditing vulnerability, ranking essential IT functions, and reviewing the storage of tape backups, with the following discussion focused on the elements of the plan itself. The plan includes a mission statement, a definition of disaster, the assignment of staff to teams, methods of compensating for human error, and standards for documenting the steps of recovery. The final portion of the guide covers the all-important initial testing of the system as well as the proper maintenance thereafter and weighs in on the pros and cons of using outside vendors for recovery systems.
Building a Disaster Recovery Plan-The Need 1
The Need 3
Plan for All Types of Disasters 11
Reasons for Planning 13
Let's Get Started 17
Definitions and Risk Mitigation 26
Server Criticality and Recovery Strategies 33
Develop the Plan 40
Validate the Recovery Plan 43
Summary 46
Vulnerability Assessment & Risk Analysis 49
Site Vulnerability Assessment 50
Vulnerability Assessment Summary 73
Performing a Risk Analysis 74
Summary 85
Conducting a Business Impact and Recoverability Analysis 87
Starting the Business Impact Analysis 89
Tangible Costs 90
Intangible Costs 94
Identifying Mission-Critical Functions 96
Outage Impact 100
Recovery Time Objective vs. Recovery Point Objective 104
Shifting Focus for Return on Investment (ROI) 115
The Process of the BIA 116
Summary 121
Critical Server Ranking 123
Classifying Systems for Recovery Priority 124
Mission-Critical Only, Please 125
Rank Your Data Backup Priorities 127
Backups, and Recovery Time and Point Objectives 129
Critical Systems Definition, A List 132
Critical Systems Definition, B List 134
Is Email Mission-Critical? 135
Hardware Requirements for Mission-Critical Servers 135
Summary 136
Building Recovery Strategy Requirements 139
The Disaster Recovery Challenge 140
Guidelines for Selecting Recovery Strategies 141
Market Trends 144
Recovery Strategies 146
Data Center Recovery Solutions 150
Determine the Level of Business Resiliency You Want to Achieve 156
Overall Site Restoration Strategy Sample 158
Summary 159
Backup and Recoverability 161
Plan for Data Recovery 162
10 Issues for the Administration of Backups 167
Checklist for Backup and Recovery 174
Backup Media Management 176
How Much to Back Up for Disaster Recovery 185
Backup Recovery and Media Services (BRMS) 186
A Simple Save Strategy 192
Save More with Save-While-Active 195
Richard's Backup Solution 198
Backups for Planned Maintenance Windows 199
IBM's Virtual Tape Solution (VTL) 200
Duplicate Your Removable Media 203
Restoration Commands 204
The BRMS System Recovery Report 207
How the System Restores Access Paths 209
Backing Up and Recovering a Domino Server 209
Hardware Management Console (HMC) 213
Summary 214
Your Business Value of Systems Availability 217
High Availability-Take the High Road 219
Recovery on Your High-Availability Investment 220
Is Your H/A Truly High Availability? 232
IBM's Capacity Backup Offering 248
Summary 250
Vital Records and Critical Data Offsite Storage 251
Vital Record Management 253
Offsite Storage Considerations 268
Choosing an Offsite Storage Provider 271
Summary 273
Building Your Teams 275
Selecting Candidates: Pick Me! No, Don't Pick Me! 277
When There Is Loss of Life or Missing People 281
Building Your Recovery Teams 284
How to Work Together 289
The IT Recovery Management Team 293
The IT Technical Recovery Team 298
The Network Team 300
The Hardware Recovery Team 301
Application Recovery Team 302
Facility Recovery Team 303
Replacement Equipment 304
Disaster Recovery Preparedness 304
Administrative Responsibilities 305
Care for Your Recovery Teams During a Disaster 305
The Team's Meeting Place 310
Summary 314
Effective Communications 317
Develop an Employee Call Sheet 319
Who Do You Contact? 323
Selecting a Meeting Place for the Command Center 329
Facing and Dealing with the Media 334
Notification Solution Design 338
Summary 340
How to Develop and Document a Disaster Recovery Plan 341
Disaster Recovery Plan Development Overview 342
Ready, Set, Write the Plan 353
The Disaster Recovery Plan's Structure 359
Developing and Writing the Procedures 365
Disaster Recovery Teams Overview 381
Summary 389
Effective Plan-Activation Procedures 391
The Disaster-Alert Notification Procedure 393
First-Alert Response 396
Hotsite Call-up Procedures 406
Recalling Tapes from Your Offsite Storage Provider 412
Site Restoration Activities 413
Summary 422
The Need for System-Related Documentation 425
A Change in the i5 Philosophy Silos 427
Write It All Down 428
I Thought Those Backup Tapes Had Everything! 429
Collecting and Maintaining System Information 431
The Prtsysinf Command 432
Complete Site Loss versus Server Loss 434
Summary 441
System i5/iSeries Restoration Procedures 443
Recovery Procedures 444
Case Study Sample 444
Summary 475
System i5/iSeries BRMS Restoration Procedures 477
Summary 506
Testing Your Disaster Recovery Plan 507
Practice Just Like the Pros 510
Satisfy the Need for Testing 511
The Embarrassment of Testing: What If We Fail? 512
Open-Book Testing 514
Define a Complete Testing Project 515
Passive Testing 518
Active Testing 529
Disaster Recovery Coordinator Testing Duties 533
Introducing Murphy's Law 534
Evaluation of Test Results 535
Be a Survivor 536
Summary 538
Plan Maintenance 539
Your Plan Design 541
Implementing a Maintenance Philosophy 542
Revisit Your Plan-Get into Maintenance Mode 545
Change Management 549
Summary 560
Selecting a Commercial Hotsite Provider 563
Advance Planning = Hotsite 564
Internal or External Hotsite? 566
What to Look for in a Hotsite Provider 567
Cost Considerations 576
Summary 581
A Family DR Plan 583
Disaster Recovery Begins at Home 584
Emergency Supplies 585
Practice and Maintain Your Plan 587
Personal and Family Requirements 588
Awareness Training 589
Information on Family Disaster Plans 589
Summary 590
Sample Documents 591
Business Impact Analysis Questionnaire 591
Operational Priorities 592
Operational Impacts 592
Customer Service 593
Cash Flow/Revenue 593
Regulatory (If Applicable) 594
Increases In Liability 594
Vendor Relations 595
Financial Control/Reporting 595
Mission Critical IT Applications 596
Vulnerability 596
Server Criticality Analysis 597
Overview
Mapping out all the preparations necessary for an effective disaster recovery plan and its safeguard—a continuous maintenance program—this guide is aimed at IT managers of small and medium businesses. The opening section covers the initial steps of auditing vulnerability, ranking essential IT functions, and reviewing the storage of tape backups, with the following discussion focused on the elements of the plan itself. The plan includes a mission statement, a ...