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The Importance of Preparing for Disaster Recovery

Posted on July 19th, 2014

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The Importance of Preparing for Disaster Recovery

To perform disaster recovery, you must prepare for disaster recovery. To prepare for disaster recovery backing up the database, disaster recovery file, and the IP address and host name of the management server is essential. As a best practice, the data should be stored off-site at a secure location.

When iadevelopments are administrating a SQL Server database, preparation for recovery from potential disasters is very important. A well-designed and tested backup and restore plan for the SQL Server backups is necessary for recovering databases after a disaster. In addition, to make sure that all the systems and data can be quickly restored to regular operation if a natural disaster should occur, we create a disaster recovery plan. When iadevelopments create this plan we consider scenarios for different types of disasters that might affect our clients business. These include natural disasters, such as a fire, and technical disasters, such as a two-disk failure in a RAID-5 array. When we create a disaster recovery plan we identify and prepare for all the steps that are required to respond to each type of disaster. Testing the recovery steps for each scenario is necessary. We recommend that at least one full test of the disaster recovery plan through the simulation of a natural disaster is performed.

iadevelopments Can Ensure Disaster Readiness

To make sure that you are ready for disaster, we recommend that periodically the following activities are performed:

• Test backup and recovery procedures thoroughly before a real failure occurs. Testing helps ensure that the required backups to recover from various failures are in place, that the procedures are clearly defined and documented, and can that they can be executed smoothly and quickly by any qualified operator.
• Perform regular database and transaction log backups to minimize the amount of lost data. We recommend that both  system and user databases are backed up.
• Maintain system logs in a secure manner. Keep records of all service packs installed on Microsoft Windows and SQL Server. Keep records of network libraries used and the security mode. Also, if SQL Server is running in Mixed Mode Authentication (SQL Server and Windows Authentication Mode), record the sa password in a secure location.
• On another server, assess the steps that have to be taken to recover from a disaster. If it is necessary, amend the steps to suit local server environment and test the amended steps.
• Maintain a base-functionality script for quickly assessing minimal capability.