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What is Disaster Recovery? Anticipate and Protect Your Business

Data is as essential to a business as a heartbeat is to the body. In today’s fast-paced technological landscape, disaster recovery(DR) plays a critical role. It’s not just about restoring data after an incident but about adopting proactive strategies to ensure business continuity and minimise the impact of critical disruptions.

This article will explore what disaster recovery is, its importance in the tech world, and how to implement it effectively.

The Urgent Need for Disaster Recovery

Every year, World Backup Day prompts organisations to prioritise regular backups and disaster recovery (DR) testing. This day serves as both a call to action and an opportunity to raise awareness about costly data loss incidents that have affected tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, and others.

According to the Data Loss Landscape study, 84.7% of organisations experienced one or more data loss incidents in 2023, with an average of 15 incidents annually per organisation. In Spain, 98% of companies faced at least one data loss incident that same year. These alarming statistics highlight the necessity of disaster recovery as a matter of survival.

What is Disaster Recovery?

Disaster recovery (DR) is a critical IT management strategy that enables organisations to maintain operational continuity after catastrophic events, such as natural disasters, hardware failures, cyber-attacks, or human errors. These events can threaten data availability and disrupt the functionality of critical systems.

What Causes Data Loss?

While data loss is often attributed to human error or lack of awareness among employees, Neil Daswani, co-director of Stanford’s Advanced Cybersecurity Program, contends that we must "defend our systems even when people make mistakes."

The main causes of data loss include:

  • Human Errors: Accidental deletions or incorrect configurations are common.
  • Cyber Attacks: Ransomware and phishing pose significant threats to data security.
  • Hardware Failures: Hard drives and servers can malfunction, leading to significant data loss.
  • Natural Disasters: Floods, fires, and earthquakes can damage data centres.
  • Software Failures: Faulty applications can corrupt data.
  • Lack of a DR Plan: Failing to implement a disaster recovery strategy can lead to permanent data loss.
  • Generative AI: Misuse of generative AI can produce false data, compromising information integrity.

What Should a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) Include?

A disaster recovery plan is essential for reducing downtime and minimising data loss. According to a 2022 ITIC study, unplanned downtime costs businesses at least $5,000 per minute. A robust DR plan should include:

  • Risk Assessment: Identify risks like natural disasters, hardware failures, cyber-attacks, and human errors that could impact critical systems and data.
  • Planning: Develop a detailed plan outlining backup and recovery procedures, regularly updating it to accommodate changes in infrastructure and emerging threats.
  • Technology: Implement advanced solutions such as real-time data replication and cloud storage to ensure data availability and integrity.
  • Regular Testing: Conduct regular disaster recovery tests to ensure the plan’s effectiveness and address weaknesses before a real event occurs.
  • Staff Training: Train personnel in DR procedures to ensure a quick and effective response during an incident.

What Are RTO and RPO in Disaster Recovery?

An effective disaster recovery plan must consider two key objectives: the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and the Recovery Point Objective (RPO).

  • Recovery Time Objective (RTO): Refers to the maximum acceptable downtime for business operations. For instance, if a business has an RTO of four hours, it cannot afford to be inactive for longer without suffering substantial losses.
  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO): Indicates the maximum amount of data that a business can afford to lose. An RPO of 30 minutes, for example, means the business can lose up to 30 minutes’ worth of data before the impact becomes critical.

These parameters are crucial to ensuring business continuity in the face of adverse events.

How NetApp Can Help with Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery remains expensive, slow, and often incomplete, leading to significant downtime and sometimes irretrievable losses. So, how can data loss be prevented?

NetApp provides industry-leading disaster recovery solutions through platforms like BlueXP and Cloud Volumes ONTAP, offering numerous advantages, including:

  • Performance: NetApp’s SnapMirror® technology ensures rapid operations with data deduplication and compression, reducing costs and system load.
  • Reliability: Trusted by thousands of organisations, NetApp’s DR solutions deliver fast transfers and consistent recoveries.
  • Simplicity: NetApp’s BlueXP™ provides an intuitive SaaS control panel and easy-to-deploy templates for both cloud and on-premise environments, streamlining disaster recovery preparations.
  • Reduced Risk: NetApp maintains a uniform VMware environment to minimise disruptions during disaster recovery.
  • Cost Efficiency: These solutions eliminate the need for additional infrastructure and reduce bandwidth requirements with incremental block technology.
  • Flexibility: Cloud Volumes ONTAP offers reliable, cost-effective, and flexible solutions for both on-premises and cloud storage environments, leveraging AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure for disaster recovery.

Don't wait until it’s too late – secure your business’s continuity now! Connect with our NetApp chat today and learn more about our disaster recovery solutions.