Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP)
The Disaster Recovery Planning is essential a
sub-process of the overall Business continuity planning.
The Reason for it being often
address as a separate topic stems
from the mainly IT driven Recovery
planning steps which have in a way
developed to an own discipline.
While Business continuity planning
addresses preparedness of Business
for disasters in general with the
focus on defining what Degree of
recovery is needed [Recovery
Point Objective (RPO) and
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) ]
and for what function, the disaster
recovery is the means of defining
how this is to be achieved.
The how, for let's say logistics or
Premise recovery etc, is mainly an
individual plan on a case by case
basis.
The how for IT however is pretty
standardized and addresses topics
like backup strategies, redundant
systems etc.
IT Discovery Planning
Under Disaster Recovery Planning for
IT there are for example 7 typical
Tiers of recovery as methods of
recovering mission-critical computer
systems as required to support
business continuity:
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- Tier 0: No off-site data – Possibly no recovery
- Tier 1: Data backup with no hot site
- Tier 2: Data backup with a hot site
- Tier 3: Electronic vaulting
- Tier 4: Point-in-time copies
- Tier 5: Transaction integrity
- Tier 6: Zero or near-Zero data loss
- Tier 7: Highly automated, business integrated solution
All these Tiers have a defined Risk mitigation level and
a corresponding cost associated. Hence it is up to the
Business Continuity Planning to define what is needed
for a specific business.
Solution
There are many Solution to implement the afore mentioned
level of Security which are also offered by many
Hardware vendors.
In essence it is a Question of wise choosing of
solutions based on the Safety level really needed and the
landscape in place for a given business.
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