Should Servers Be Part of a Disaster Recovery Plan?

Companies invest thousands of dollars into the servers that are included in their information technology (IT) infrastructure. Since these machines are crucial to the day-to-day performance of the organization, a single service interruption will cost the company thousands of dollars in lost productivity during downtime and recovery time. Companies can avoid these costs by creating a disaster recovery plan.

Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity, which is a process meant to keep all aspects of the business functioning following a natural or fabricated disaster. While business continuity focuses on all areas of the business, the recovery process focuses specifically on keeping IT systems up and running. When businesses create a disaster recovery plan, they might acquire pre-owned servers at a low used server price to minimize the chance of significant downtime. However, much more goes into a disaster recovery plan than just the acquisition of inexpensive servers or other servers to back up data. The best disaster recovery plan will include a strategy for the loss of each of these elements:

• Physical Device Environment: A key card access system for the room or rooms where servers are stored could protect machines from theft or vandalism, but will not be enough to prevent damage during a flood. Companies might back up data at a colocation center so that it can still be accessed if the physical device environment is threatened.
• Hardware: The servers and other machines that a company uses to carry out IT processes, including desktop computers, laptop computers, wireless devices, and peripheral machines, are still vulnerable to device failure. A good disaster recovery plan will also identify potential disasters and put systems in place to minimize or eliminate the chance that these disasters affect their machines. Companies could perform regular diagnostic testing and repairs to keep all machines in optimal working order.
• Connectivity Devices: Companies use routers, wireless (Wi-Fi) devices, cables, and fiber to connect the aforementioned hardware to Internet and other service providers. Ideally, a disaster recovery plan will establish steps that employees can take when an outage causes these connectivity devices to drop their connection.
• Software: All enterprises rely on specific programs to complete vital processes like e-mail, resource management, project tracking, and electronic data interchange. Another preventative measure that should be included in any disaster recovery plan is to keep these applications up-to-date by regularly checking for updates.
• Data: Companies use data for a number of reasons, but operations could grind to a halt if data is no longer accessible. Outsourcing data storage to a colocation center or storing data on the cloud are two strategies for protecting the company from potential data loss.

Servers can also be included in disaster recovery plans, due to a low used server price that allows companies to acquire these machines inexpensively. These servers can back up data or critical applications so that if the physical location or primary data storage machine becomes threatened, companies will still be able to access this information. draas solutions