What sort of havoc would a flood or earthquake do to your IT infrastructure? These sorts of disasters are why it is essential to have a recovery plan in place that will account for anything that could go wrong.
One of the best ways to implement a successful disaster recovery plan is to use the cloud. With a cloud-based disaster recovery plan, you will always have access to the things you need, as long as you can connect to the Internet. Here are some things that you need to consider when developing your disaster recovery plan.
Triple Check Your Application and Systems Inventory
This list of your production-critical application needs to go through multiple pairs of eyes.
The success of your cloud recovery plan is contingent on making sure that it covers every application necessary, especially the applications considered production critical. This list of your production-critical application needs to go through multiple pairs of eyes. In some cases, dozens of people, both in and out of IT, will need to be consulted. Making sure your application inventory is complete, accurate, and prioritized will require many conversations with higher-ups and will take time, make sure you give it the time it needs.
Double Check Your Bandwidth Usage
You don’t want to to exceed your bandwidth limits.
You should make sure that your bandwidth is considered up-front. You may be surprised by how much bandwidth you actually need, but don’t want to end up paying for excess. Conversely, you don’t want to to exceed your bandwidth limits because you may end up with unnecessary charges. If you’re not sure how much bandwidth you’ll need, talk to someone impartial about the amount you have already and the specifics of your cloud recovery plan so they can provide you with an estimate. If you’re looking for an impartial peer or consultant, consider looking through our network.
Keep Your Software Up To Date
This may seem redundant, as so many applications and products are designed to update automatically nowadays. However, this is not always true. Backing up an older version of your software to the cloud and then applying it into your production environment, will only complicate your recovery, as system errors and incompatibility issues are bound to come up and create undue stress during your recovery process.
Make Security a Priority
Making sure that your cloud backups are current with the security measures that are in production is vital to your cloud recovery plan’s success. Not only do you want to make sure that your data is safe from anything potentially harmful, but you want to make sure that the data can be retrieved easily and without security level inconsistencies. If you’re trying to get your backup data to production as quickly as possible, and the permission levels set on the backups are different from those in production, you will have to take the extra time to bring your data to the appropriate permission levels.
Budget Effectively
Cloud-based recovery plan implementations are costly. Every product you’re backing up cost a large amount of money to implement. As you are backing up many multi-million dollar products and systems, you’ll want to make sure that you are staying within your budget parameters.
Cloud-based recovery is changing how data is being kept secure and up-to-date. However, it is incredibly important to practice your due diligence and make sure that you are taking all of the appropriate steps to make sure you have the best approach for your disaster recovery plan. This process will take time but is in your university’s best interest to make sure that it is as fool-proof as possible.
Avoid costly mistakes and wasted time – talk to an impartial peer in Higher Ed!
There is nothing like speaking with a peer who has implemented the same product – send us a request.
You can also provide general feedback, inquire about additional free resources, submit a topic you’d like us to cover, tell us about a feature you’d like to see, or request the best staff for your project.