Disaster Recovery (DR): Alternate Site Recovery Strategy 

Most companies are overwhelmed by the quality and detail found in the findings and results of the Business Impact Assessment. The Recovery Times demanded by your end-users are getting smaller and smaller and the reliance on older recovery methods like tape backup is becoming less and less viable.

We have found that more and more companies are running 20 or more mission critical applications that need to be recovered in less than 24 hours. This means an alternate data center and tape is not an option but a necessity.

Necessity breeds invention and to this end, SMS invented the SMS Continuity Continuum Chart. This chart and the process used to develop it, takes into consideration your business needs, your budget and how much downtime you can afford. The recommendations of this plan lead to site selection.

The Continuity Continuum is how SMS helps you navigate through the myriad of strategies and options available to you to develop a plan that fits your company’s goals and your organization’s maturity.

SMS helps your organization develop a number of iterative strategic steps to get to your final goal. This helps organizations take “baby-steps” toward this more complicated setting, reducing recovery time along the way, and increasing their organization’s maturity to support the new environment.

So, do you build new? Buy existing? Co-locate in a shared facility? Mirror data? Build Active-active configurations? What next?