Disaster Recovery Planning
Close the gap between your DR capabilities and service continuity requirements.
- Misalignment with business needs, leading to higher costs or under-provisioning.
- Focusing on major disasters, and lacking an appropriate response to less-obvious disasters.
- Lack of testing, and therefore lack of confidence in the plan.
- No analysis of what’s required to improve recovery times.
Workshop: Disaster Recovery Planning
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Our DRP Research is designed to enable you to make yourself World Class. We do this by:
- Breaking down Disaster Recovery Planning into digestible steps
- Providing actionable instructions to complete each step
- Provide all the tools and templates you need
We recommend that you do all the modules to improve your DRP strategy.
Module 1: Assess the current state
The Purpose
- A prioritized list of mission critical applications.
- Critical application dependencies identified.
- Summary of current DR challenges.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Prioritize DR efforts.
- Prevent cracks in DR strategy by accounting for dependencies.
- Address current DR challenges as we go through the remainder of the workshop.
Activities
Outputs
Identify mission critical business activities and applications
- Prioritized list of critical applications
Identify dependencies
- List of dependencies for critical applications
Identify current DR capabilities and challenges
- Summary of current capabilities and challenges
Included Resources
Assess Current State
Module 2: Determine recovery time requirements
The Purpose
- Estimated cost of downtime for specific mission critical applications.
- RPOs and RTOs based on business impact.
- A BIA Tool with your estimates for future evaluations.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Rationalize investment in high availability and DR technology.
- Prioritize DR efforts based on business impact, not perceived importance.
- Conduct future BIAs when your environment and business needs change.
Activities
Outputs
Understand BIA goals and benefits
- Strategy for conducting a BIA
Estimate the business impact of downtime
- Estimated costs of downtime
Define RPOs and RTOs based on the BIA
- Recovery objectives (RPOs, RTOs)
Included Resources
Determine Recovery Time Requirements
Tool - Business Impact Analysis Workbook
Module 3: Close the Technology Gap
The Purpose
- A DR gap analysis.
- Risk/impact analysis that highlights likely points of failure that need to be addressed.
- A prioritized list of technology enhancements to address DR gaps and risk areas.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Communicate DR gaps and business risks in a meaningful way.
- Make appropriate, right-sized technology decisions based on risks and DR requirements.
- Implement a plan to address risks and DR gaps.
Activities
Outputs
Identify risks of failure in your infrastructure
- List of issues with current classification scheme
Use tabletop planning to identify DR gaps
- DR capability gap analysis
Create a DR technology roadmap
- DR technology roadmap
Included Resources
Close the Technology Gap
Tool - Technology Investment Prioritization
Module 4: Close the Process Gap
The Purpose
- An incident response plan that addresses DR gaps uncovered by the tabletop planning exercise.
- A clear escalation path and timeline from event to declaring the disaster.
- A plan to formalize IT processes with service continuity in mind, from change management to capacity planning.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Ensure DR and everyday IT processes align with service continuity objectives.
- Efficiently manage DR incidents from relatively minor events (e.g. hardware failure) to major disasters.
Activities
Outputs
Create an incident response plan
- Incident response plan
Align service management with DR
- Escalation timeline from event to DR
Identify other process gaps
- Process gap analysis
Included Resources
Close the Process Gap
Tool - DR Planning and Monitoring for DRP WCO
Module 5: Validate Technology and Process Changes
The Purpose
- DR process and technology plan validation.
- An understanding of business continuity risks beyond technology considerations.
- Action items to follow-up on proposed process and technology changes.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Initiate process changes to meet DR and service continuity objectives.
- Propose a DR technology roadmap to the Executive Team backed by a business impact analysis and a disaster scenario walkthrough.
Activities
Outputs
Use tabletop testing to validate DR changes
- DR technology and process validation
Lay the foundation for BCP
- BCP considerations
Workshop wrap-up
- Action items and scheduled follow-up
Included Resources
Validate Changes and Appendix
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A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
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