Disaster Recovery Planning for the Developer, Part 4

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/security/article.php/3616291/Disaster-Recovery-Planning-for-the-Developer-Part-4.htm (Back to article)

In our last article we went through the steps of creating a Disaster Recovery Plan for our ficticious business, Don's Web Design. This article, our last in this series, will provide you with the resources you need to complete your own DRP.

We've scoured the web for the best resources to help you build your data recovery plan, and we've broken them down into the following four categories.

Note that inclusion in this resource listing does not mean endorsement of any company listed; we're providing these resources for the reader's convenience. Descriptions that follow come from the respective site's own pages, hence the quotations.

Software

Strohl Systems'LDRPS - Their Living Disaster Recovery Planning System is a "flexible, central data repository with built-in, proven business continuity planning expertise. The product easily manages complex business continuity plan data, keeps plans current and accurate and provides clear, concise reports on the status of planning efforts."
TAMP DRS - The Disaster Recovery System (DRS) is "planning software for business continuity and continuity of operations"
UltraBac Software - "UltraBac is a very simple, very fast disaster recovery solution for small to medium businesses."
iCluster - "iCluster mirrors critical DB2 application data and objects in real-time from a primary system to one or more secondary systems. In the event of planned or unplanned downtime, business users are switched rapidly to one of the secondary systems."
XO Soft - "High availability automatic failover and disaster recovery solutions for Exchange, SQL, Oracle, and File Servers"

Hosted Services

IBM Applications on Demand - "Applications on Demand, application hosting services, provides you with highly reliable and affordable disaster recovery solutions that are designed to embed redundancies to the various key layers of the technology stack."
Data Replication Services - "ServePaths Disaster Recovery and HA solutions enable businesses to maintain critical systems during a disaster or a system outage, with or without user intervention and without the difficulty of restoring from tape."
LiveVault Online Backup Service - "Automated, offsite data backup and disaster recovery for servers"
SunGard Disaster Recovery - "We offer a complete solution for keeping you up and running despite unplanned interruptions to your business."
Disaster Recovery Service - "Data Foundry provides the infrastructure, accommodations and network facilities needed to keep your business up and running in the event of a declared disaster."
ServePath DR Replicator - "ServePath DR Replicator is a turnkey offsite Disaster Recovery Solution with HA automatic failover for Exchange, SQL Server, or application servers (WAN). Replicate your critical data to a server in ServePath's data center that is pre-configured with the same applications for seamless failover in the event of a disaster."

Tools and Templates

The BCP Generator - "The template covers everything from initial business impact analysis through to return to business as usual following an incident. The forms included are very straightforward, allowing easy update and completion."
E-Janco's Disaster Recovery Plan Template - "This Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) can be used as a Disaster Planning template for any enterprise."
IBM's Disaster Recovery Plan Template - "Here is a template to use as you create your disaster recovery plan. You can browse this template here; to print it, download and print the PDF file for this topic."

Resources

Continuity Central - "Continuity Central provides a constantly updated one-stop resource of business continuity news, jobs and information."
BCP & DRP World - "Here you will find software to assist with BIA and risk analysis, as well as links to tools/services to help you create, maintain and audit the plan itself."
Disaster Recovery Guide - "This guide to Disaster Recovery Planning is intended to be a launch pad for those seeking help with the business continuity planning process. It offers information, guidance, tips, and links to a range of resources."
Disaster Recovery Planning Forum - "Discuss and develop your plan for business continuity in the event of a disaster."
Disaster Recovery Institute - "Disaster Recovery Institute [was created] in order to develop a base of knowledge in contingency planning and the management of risk, a rapidly growing profession. Today DRI International administers the industry's premier educational and certification programs for those engaged in the practice of business continuity planning and management."
Association of Contingency Planners - "The Association of Contingency Planners (ACP) is a non-profit trade association dedicated to fostering continued professional growth and development in effective Contingency & Business Resumption Planning."
Disaster Recovery Journal - "Dedicated to the field of disaster recovery and business continuity."
Survive - "Survive is a forum for expertise and information exchange among Business Continuity (BC) management practitioners, and all managers and directors with responsibility for ensuring the resilience and ultimate survival of their organisations."
Globalcontinuity.com - "Globalcontinuity.com is the world's most comprehensive resource for Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery and Risk Management specialists."

Conclusion

Disaster Planning is a project that is never finished...you will never get to a point when your planning and testing is "done." That said, if you take the time to create your own Disaster Recovery Plan, and test it periodically, you will be able to handle 99% of the scenarios that may occur in your business lifetime, and that's a comforting feeling to have!