Posted by Rick Fowler, TCC Director of Mainframe Services
I read some surprising statistics regarding Disaster Recovery (DR) in a recent article in IBM Systems Magazine. Pearson, T. (2018, January). A Plan in Place. Retrieved January 24, 2018, from http://www.ibmsystemsmagmainframedigital.com/nxtbooks/ibmsystemsmag/mainframe_20180102/index.php#/32
The article stated that in a survey of organizations:
- 50% of organizations do not have a documented DR plan
- 50% use data backup as their sole DR plan
- 55% are not testing recovery plans regularly
- 23% have never tested their recovery plan
We know that unplanned outages can happen at any time to any organization. Organizations need to plan a recovery methodology that allows operations to continue or resume very quickly after an outage. The article discusses this four-step approach to recovery from a disaster that results in the loss of technology and facilities.
- Identify the location where the recovery will occur.
- Define what data you had at the time of the disaster so you know what to recover.
- Identify where applications will be hosted so they can be restarted.
- Consider the human factors such as communication and collaboration.
These are just some of the major considerations for crafting a disaster recovery plan. Resuming normal business operations also includes planning for workforce shortages and other non-technology factors. Once a plan is in place, it should be tested at least once a year so all parties understand their roles and responsibilities.
To find out more about TCC’s Mainframe Managed Services, please visit our website https://www.e-tcc.com/managed-services.
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