Backup & Disaster Recovery Plan for Servers - Sample
Please use this disaster recovery plan as a guide only - please contact us to design a suitable plan for your business.
Components:
· Server hardware – both Physical and Virtual
· Optional Shared Storage
· NAS running Windows 7 Pro or Windows Storage Server with an appropriate amount of disk space (at least 3 times the amount of data you want to backup)
· Image based backup software like Shadowprotect.
· Archive/Offsite Tape or USB Drives or optional offsite backup destination
· Mail Archive Solution for Email
· Documented Disaster Recovery Plan
Setup/Planning/Configuration
Finalise your Disaster Recovery Plan including listing critical servers and business impact if servers occur data loss and down-time.
Full System Images are taken every weekend using Shadowprotect or your preferred image based backup, with incremental backups taken every 15minutes, hour or daily .
The backups target is a local NAS/PC backup device, which is in turn is backed up to USB Hard Drives. The USB drives are swapped over daily & stored off site (staff member manually takes them offsite).
In addition to the daily USB Hard Drives, there is a Monthly USB backup which is stored offsite, as well as an optional EOF Yearly USB Backup
Shadowprotect is configured to retain up to 2 months’ worth of backups this gives us a recall of up to 2 months in the event someone deletes or changes something.
The backup solution is monitored daily by alltasksIT, In the event of any backup failures or if a server fails to notify us of a successful backup, a job is automatically created in the alltasksIT help desk system.
Secondary manual monthly backup restore tests of individual files are completed to ensure the backups are completing successfully, we would also recommend a full server disaster recovery test , whereby we would restore your server onto another server and confirm it operates.
Disaster Recovery Events:
Server Theft or Major Physical damage:
In the event of a complete server theft or major physical damage, we should be able to restore to a full operational state within 24 hours on alternate hardware using the most recent backup (either from the NAS or the offsite USB drive) – the recovery time will be reduced or increased depending on the availability to spare/new server hardware.
Please note we will lose data changes made since the last backup was copied to the offsite drive or local NAS (so up to 24 hours)
On Server Host Failure (if Shared Storage is available):
If one server fails we have the ability to immediately start the servers onto the 2nd Host due to the use of SAN (Shared Storage) and VMWare High Availability option.
Server vendor will be called to repair the failed host and once that is complete we can move back the virtual servers.
Data Loss (user deletes data files or data corruption occurs):
We can restore files from most recent backup - Please note we may lose data changes made since the last backup.
Office Fire damages all equipment and office is not accessible:
Servers can be restored onto alternative hardware.
In the event of Fire and all equipment is damaged including desktops etc added time will be required to source, supply and re-configure all desktops, printers, scanners and applications.
If office is not accessible then will we need to find an offsite location to house the servers and associated equipment and staff.
Please note we may lose data changes made since the last backup was copied to the offsite drive (so up to 24 hours)
Additional Recommendations:
1. Introduce automatic backup to an offsite location thus reducing the amount of data loss in the event of a disaster (ideally located in the same state).
2. Organise Disaster Recovery Servers ideally at the offsite location thus reducing the amount of down-time.
3. Organize an offsite location where staff can operate from and or utilize employees homes and VPN/remote access technology.
4. Disaster Recovery strategy for your phone systems so you can remain in contact.
5. Introduce a Mail Archive solution to protect every email that is sent or received by your organisation
6. Keep your Disaster Recovery Plan updated
For more information please contact us on 03 93127444 or email
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Background of disaster recovery planning
