Disaster Recovery Testing: the secret to a reliable disaster recovery plan.

In last week’s blog, I discussed the key steps businesses should take in order to create a successful disaster recovery plan (you can view the blog here). Following on from my blog, I delved deeper in to research covering disaster recovery and within my findings I discovered a shockingly low statistic;

In a study conducted in 2012 of 500 US and European SMEs, only 8% conducted regular tests of their backup and recovery process.

As you would have seen in my seven simple steps on creating a successful disaster recovery plan, the final step is to regularly carry out tests to ensure that the plan will work in a time of crisis. Just to recap, if you are not capturing the data properly during your backup, it will not recover properly after a disaster meaning you could join the 90% statistic of businesses forced to shut down within two years due to losing all of their data!

For those of you that are still not buying into this. I will help you understand the importance of data recovery testing...

• Would you leave your house without checking all your windows and doors are locked first?

• Would you ride your bike down a mountain without checking your brakes worked beforehand

• Would you throw yourself off a bungee jump without getting your harness checked first?

I have faith that you answered no to each of these and that this is because you predicted what could happen. Since disasters are unpredictable, why would you, and any other business, risk not testing the disaster recovery plan regularly?

As a result of finding out businesses are currently lacking in disaster recovery testing, I have decided that more knowledge and advice in this area needs to be shared. So this week I am going to run through the best way of successfully testing that your backup and recovery works.

Let me introduce you to:

Recovery Simulator provides reliable, automated recovery simulation for IBM’s TSM and EMC’s Networker users. Through a centralised management console the Recovery Simulator add-on for TBMR and NBMR products simulates a full recovery to a new virtual machine from a specified TSM or Networker backup to ensure that you will recover all of your business data successfully if a crisis was to happen.

Key benefits:

To view Recovery Simulator in action view the short demo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2f0DZ6WwYI

Recovery Simulator is currently available for TBMR and NBMR products.

To find out more on how to get hold of this software or to speak to an expert, call the free phone number: +441453 847000 or send an email to: sales@cristie.com