Every organization must invest time and money in preparing a data recovery procedure. This plan should not be limited to the IT department alone but it should involve every individual in the organization.

Among the issues that the data recovery procedure must address are:

– What are the possible failure scenarios?
– What data is absolutely critical, and must be saved?
– How often should backups be performed?
– When should one opt for full vis a vis an incremental or differential backup?
– Should backups be performed while users are working or when they get offline?
– Should backups be as per an automated scheduling process?
– How can the success of a backup be verified and the fact that it can be used?
– How long must backups be kept before reusing the medium?
– How long will it take to restore data from the last back up?
– Where would the backup media be stored?
– Would appropriate personnel have access to backup media for restores?
– In the absence of the System Administrator who will perform theses tasks?

This is not all. To create an effective disaster management plan, the organization must define its data management goals and requirements. Also, backups and restoration procedures must be developed with qualified and trained people. Most important, the organization must have a back up and restore administrator, whose job must be to perform all these tasks religiously.

The contingency plan should include detailed descriptions of the main system components, such as CPU, memory, video mode settings, drives, SCSI configuration, network card configuration, tape drive, etc. The plan must also include details of I/O, DMA, IRQ, and SCSI settings in detail.

The contingency plan will be incomplete if it does not include details of operating systems, service packs, OEM specific drivers, NetVault distribution media and a list of current patches. In fact, good system administrators insist on making detailed notes of each and every aspect of system configuration and administration. They realize how important this information can be in case of a system failure or collapse or when the system is being upgraded or changed.

Organizations that do not invest in data recovery processes are making a big mistake. They stand to lose valuable data; data that may be very difficult to recover or restore. It therefore makes sense to invest in data recovery procedure.

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