As discussed in Part 1, cloud disaster recovery assists businesses in recovering their critical systems after a natural or manmade disaster by providing remote access in a secure virtual environment. Part 2 will discuss Cloud Disaster Recovery (CDR) Planning Steps 1 to 3.

Step 1 – Consider IT Infrastructure and Risks

Considering the IT infrastructure of your company will be crucial for implementing CDR. This will involve a complete inventory of the assets, data, and equipment of your company.

A second step is assessing the risks to the IT systems of your organization. Some of the risks that may occur and result in disaster recovery include cybercrime, disgruntled employees, manmade and natural disasters, and power outages.

After obtaining an inventory and determining the risks to your company’s IT systems, your team will be in a much better position to design and implement a cloud disaster recovery plan. The goal is to minimize or eliminate the risks to your company’s IT infrastructure.

Step 2 – Business Impact Analysis

A business impact analysis will allow your team to better understand your business operation’s limitations if a disaster strikes. The below summarizes two parameters that will help assess the risk of data loss.

• Recovery Time Objective – RTO is what an organization considers as the maximum time that its applications can stay offline before the resulting downtime affects its business operations.

• Recovery Point Objective – RPO is what an organization considers as the amount of data that can be lost before significant harm occurs.

Step 3 – DR Planning Based On RTO & RPO

After determining the RTO and RPO of your organization, your team can begin designing a functioning system that will be able to meet your disaster recovery objectives. Below is a list of DR approaches that can be considered for implementing a disaster recovery plan.

• Backup & Restore
• Full Replication in the Cloud
• Multi-Cloud Option
• Pilot Light Approach
• Warm Standby

Your team can deploy one or a combination of the above approaches to meet the technical and business requirements of your company’s disaster recovery plan.

Part 3 will discuss Cloud Disaster Recovery (CDR) Planning Steps 4 to 7.

Alpha Business Support

Choosing an expert computer technology-support provider is an important decision for your business. Alpha has been a trusted partner of many companies in Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis areas since 1990. For affordable client-focused network consulting services and solutions, please call Alpha today at (410) 295-9500.