The spree of hurricanes over the last couple months have already caused billions of dollars in damage, but hurricane season is far from over. If storms like these present risk to your business, it’s time to develop a watertight disaster recovery plan. Here are a few things you need to consider.
Pay Attention to Location: Make sure that your back-up site is in a hurricane-free zone. Ideally, your offsite facility should be at least 100 miles away from your main location. If this isn’t possible, make sure that it’s built to withstand wind speeds of 160 mph and is supported by back-up generators and a minimum of 18 inches of space beneath all critical equipment. This will ensure the safety of your back-up system.
Determine a back-up hierarchy: certain parts of your IT are more valuable than others. Make sure you know which pieces are most important and set them up to be the first parts to be recovered.
Take Advantage of the Cloud: The cloud allows you to store data in high-availability, geo-redundant servers. This means your backups can be accessed via the internet, allowing authorized users to access critical files from any device, anywhere.
Use Image Based Backups: Unlike fragile tape backups, image-based backups take a snapshot of your systems, creating a copy of the OS and all stored data. This allows you to boot the image on any device, allowing you to back-up and restore critical files in seconds.