A Blueprint for a Disaster Backup Recovery Plan for Your Computer Systems

Most businesses depend on their computer systems to process and generate their business information and the data involved is usually essential to keep the businesses running. In most cases especially in the medical fields and banking the information that their computer systems process and generate are highly critical. Disasters can occur from any number of sources. Natural disasters such as hurricanes, power outages, and fires and floods whether accidental or sabotage can occur. Another threat to a computer system that many overlook is the computer virus. A Disaster Backup plan is needed to recover from all of these actions if they ever occur.

A Disaster Backup Recovery Plan is a plan to restore critical systems back to their original state before a disaster struck in a quick and efficient manner. There are several conditions or steps in the preparation of the Disaster backup Recovery plan

The first step is planning and research to find out what will you need and what personnel will you need in a disaster. Planning on what equipment you will need to restore the systems and what personnel will help in this important task. Create a checklist of all servers and PCs and the specifications to run the systems and applications. This will come in handy when you have to create a mirror backup site for restoring the systems.

The next steps are to find out what are the critical functions of your computer systems and to find out how to get your systems backed up. You will also need to have a backup storage facility which should be as far away as possible from your current location. This is where you will probably restore your systems back from your backups. Once you know what are the critical systems of your business you will need to back up your data and get the latest backups to your storage building. At this building you should have everything to bring your critical systems up and running.

The next steps are training the personnel to use the backup plan and for the testing of the Disaster Backup Recovery Plan. You will need to run a mock disaster to test the plan. You use the personnel who can restore the backups for your systems and applications and get the systems online. There is a need for a list of all personnel that will be included in this plan and this includes their addresses, all phone numbers and pager numbers. The personnel list is critical for the communications lines to be open when a disaster occurs.

The last step is to maintain the Disaster backup Recovery plan by keeping it updated and fully tested each year. Some businesses do this every six months. This is the general blueprint of a Disaster Backup Recovery Plan in which a business can recover its systems and applications within a period of 24 to 48 hours.