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Does anyone have any advice to offer about creating Disaster Recovery Plans
Small Company, 25 - 50 employees, Equipment Rental Leasing, using MS OS\ Apps and Dynamics Navision DB
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5 Answers
This is a really complex question. I agree with both John and Michael.
I wrote a blog about DR sites (http://www.jasonabrahamson.com/blog/?p=284) sometime ago but it was mainly focused on one aspect and for larger companies.
The real consideration, as asked by John, what is your goal with a DR site.
With a small business you can get a company to setup a VM environment for you co-located. This would be a cost effective way to synchronize your environment so its always up-to-date. With VPN connections you could easily work off of the mirrored environment
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Don, this is such a difficult question to answer without a better understanding of your environment. There are so many options available today that can shape your DR solution there's no way to cover them in this forum.
Things to consider are;
Are you hosting your servers internally or are you using a hosting service?
Do you have multiple sites or just one?
Are you using any type of server Virtualization?
Is your SQL server mirrored?
Are you using Active Directory? If so there are dynamics that must be considered.
Also, you should clarify weather you are interested in Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity which are different.
If I can help you in any way or if you'd like to bounce some ideas off a seasoned professional feel free to contact me. You can also submit questions on my web site at www.ITAnswers4U.com
Good luck Don
Don, I agree completely with John Bagdanov's response, but feel compelled to offer you at least some advice you can use right now.
1. Identify the most critical information at your business and on what computer or computers it is stored. Then make sure that information is protected, at least by a basic hosted back-up and recovery service such as those offered by Mozy or Carbonite.
2. Identify the people most critical to your operations, and make sure there are plans in place to connect with them in the face of a disaster that makes it impossible for them to get to their usual workplaces. This may mean equipping them with alternative communications tools and/or temporary workplaces located elsewhere.
3. Get your initial steps documented and into the hands of all of your employees. Make sure they know and appreciate the value of your business-critical IT and human resources, and encourage them to back up information critical to them.
Over time, you should get everyone on the same page in terms of regular off-site backups and tests of the ability to recover the backed-up data, and in terms of dealing with situations in which key people may be unavailable. But these steps will at least get you started in ways that should help you if there's a significant threat to business continuity before you get a formal plan created and implemented. Good luck!
I agree with the response that advises having someone carve out a piece of their VM environment for you. They take the DR responsibility - back-ups, fail-over site, redundant power/communications, etc.
You can then concentrate on the part many people overlook - Business Continuity.
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