Six step to develop Disaster Recovery Plan

How to develop Disaster Recovery Plan for your company? This simple guidance from W. Curtis Preston in his book Unix Backup and Recovery tell us six step to develop Disaster Recovery Plan. Here is the list.

1. Define (un)acceptable loss / Risk Assessment

“…Before you develop a disaster recovery plan, decide how much you will lose if you don't. That will help you decide how much time, effort, and money to spend on a disaster/recovery plan…”

Curtis give pressure on define unacceptable loss, or in the other ways perform a Risk Assessment for entire scenario. As we know that risk could be transferred (insurance), mitigated (by control it) or even accept the risk.

2. Back up everything.

“…You have to make sure that everything is backed up-including data, metadata, and the instructions you'll need to get them back…”

Curtis said to backup everything, (as long as you can have it), the basic principle is we could protect any kind of asset that we have.

3. Organize everything.

You have everything on backup volumes. But can you find the volume you need when disaster strikes? The key to being able to find your backups is organization.

4. Protect against disasters.

Most people think about natural disasters only when creating a disaster recovery plan. There are nine other types of disasters, and you have to protect against all of them.

5. Document what you have done.

You need to document your plan in such a way that anyone can follow your steps after or during a disaster.

6. Test, test, test.

A disaster recovery plan that has not been tested is not a plan; it's a proposal. You don't want to be in the middle of a disaster and discover that you have forgotten some critical steps.

Do you think that Curtis approach is applicable to your company? Any other advice?