Disaster Recovery

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Ive been tasked with writing some network documentation from the schools i work in, specifically disaster recovery plans.

 

Has anyone written these before and has one i can have a look at? Just want to see how it should be laid out and how it should be worded.

 

Thanks,

[FranWatson]

Noticed your posting and wondered if you had completed your recovery plan. I have the same task for my school district and was looking for the same type of info, a sample to see content and format. Thanks

[cpjitservices]

Disaster Recovery - Redundant Links on Switches, Server Replication, Up-to-date Machine Base Images, Off-Site Backups, etc etc is that the kind of thing you are looking for ?

[GREED]

See same thread:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-software/68679-disaster-recovery-plans.html

[m25man]

True DR is only accomplished by replication of everything at an alternate location something we simply do not have the resources for.

 

Each user here will have their own interpretation of DR and want they concieve to be an acceptable balance.

 

This often doesnt tally with what the SMT believe is possible.

 

I recently had a situation where a SIMs server had been fed bad data.

The plan was to recover the last server image to a VM whilst the current SIMs server remained in service, it took 7 Hours to create the VHD from the backup!

If nothing else it proved that to recover the entire system from physical to virtual would take at least a few days to complete using that method which was nowhere near what the SMT thought it would be, but it was all they could afford with the budget and resources made available to the IT Team.

 

Your chosen solution will ultimately be most influenced by cost and the expectations of your management.

In business a company could loose thousands of pounds an hour if the systems were down and most would think nothing of spending thousands even millions to protect it. Clustered this and replicated that.....

 

In school lets face it, life would go on even for several days without an IT system, so you must choose a service level acceptable by the managementr and then ask them to provide the budget to meet it.

 

Too many times I see systems backed up to a satisfactory level by the Network Managers standards that would simply never meet the requirements of the schools SMT in a DR situation.

 

Personally I'd be looking at making sure I have the basics covered, there are still people out there with Raid systems and no UPS fitted or worse those with UPS but dead batteries!

Minimise the risk of data loss in the first place.

[zag]

I just wrote a quick plan of what I would do if the server room burned down.

 

Its quite a good exercise to do really as it makes you think.

 

Since the advent of virtualised servers though, its pretty easy to restore things these days.