Disaster planning and Data Recovery Priorities are a vital part of the running of any business.
A prudent business owner will create a plan that allows for the restoration of physical equipment and infrastructure.
This includes the restoration of digital information and communication abilities.
Taking into account all your Data Recovery Priorities will give you the best plan for the long term.
How do I create a Data Recovery Plan ?
A plan is generated by going thru a list of questions.
The answers are what sets the Data Recovery Plan.
Step 1: Make a list of where all your Data is stored.
Next Makes lists of what type of data is stored in each spot.
Examples for where the Data is stored at include things like:
Various Computers.
Cell phones and Tables.
Various Storage devices like memory sticks and drives.
Web Based Storage like Dropbox, One Drive, etc, etc.
Who Needs a Plan ?
Everyone.
Especially the people who do not keep their data organized.
Do you keep things on your Phone ?
Is your Email all going to the Phone ?
What will you do when the phone dies or is crushed ?
It won’t happen you say ?
That is just what thousands before you said.
How do I restore Data from my Data Recovery Plan ?
What is Data Recovery Planning ?
Data Recovery Planning is the process used to proactively make a plan to actively protect your data.
This does not happen After you have lost data.
First you need to objectively look at all your data and decide what is important enough to be protected.
Second based on how much data you have its time to figure out all the storage options.
This means both lowest cost handle it yourself compared to zero work high cost automatic backup.
Next pick the best 1 or 2 storage methods. Typically you will want to use expensive backups only for the most important information.
Finally Gather all your data into one spot and setup the backup process.
For all the do it yourself stuff you will need to setup a calendar reminder to make sure you handle your part on the dates needed.
Finally schedule a time 6 months down the road to re-evaluate how its working.
Storage Costs
The easiest thing to do as a business owner is to blindly decide to blanket save all data and information you have.
This is especially true as a businessman.
You do not always know what information that is routine today might become critical in the near future.
This also generally is easy to implement.
Ideally you do not have to necessarily change all employee’s data storage and saving methods and locations.
The main benefit with this is there is no re-training needed with less errors.
Fast and Easily completed, what can go wrong with this ?
True Data Recovery Priorities
The problem with the blanket save method is that it is by Far the most expensive.
Expensive to store day to day and also very expensive to perform Data Recovery methods upon should you need it.
It is far better to cherry pick the right data to store and limit the long term costs now.
It does take time to pick the data you want need saved.
Training staff to use a new method but it will be the most sustainable of all solutions even with the added training cost.
Create the Mast Plan and backup ALL Files in more than one place.
That said, the majority of businesses today use a cloud-based backup company as their primary backup system.
Cloud based Systems are very easy to manage data storage and updates.
Store all your Business’ data on servers that are not close to the business premises.
This distance decreases the odds of data storage servers being affected by the same natural disaster that the business was.
This is a good idea.
Make sure the business has a priority list to restore all data should anything happen to their primary system.
Data Recovery Priorities and Disaster Planning
Plan that your business will suffer a catastrophic computer collapse.
You will need to restore your system to working order as quickly as possible.
You need to return to business as usual with as little disruption to your clients as possible.
Every hour of downtime costs money.
This means that you will need to have a clear plan.
It outlines the order in which your computer functions get restored by the server.
It will not help your business if your archive of closed client accounts is available, but your email isn’t.
Meet with a representative from the data storage company and communicate a clear timeline for restoration of data.
When you need them you need your email, your client information, and internal messaging system up and running first.
Your plan restores lower importance functions after critical items are finished.
Read our Main Article on Data Backup & Recovery to understand your options and limitations.
