4 ESSENTIALS THAT MSPs FORGET WHEN DISASTER RECOVERY TESTING

In order to stand out and increase monthly recurring revenue, focus on the disaster recovery aspect of backup and disaster recovery.

To fully capitalise on the advantages of disaster recovery testing, keep the following four best practices in mind.

Test everything

Technology alone won’t save businesses paralysed by an IT emergency. Disaster recovery testing should also engage on the business level, considering continuity of operations and processes along with the validation of actual data availability. How robust is your disaster recovery plan? Being properly prepared can be as simple as knowing who to call and having an up-to-date contact list.

Your disaster recovery plan should also avoid ambiguity and set expectations when it comes to designating team and individual roles and responsibilities. Do both you and your clients know what to hold each other accountable for or who to reach out to when something goes wrong?

Test regularly

How often should you be conducting disaster recovery tests? There’s no hard and fast rule, and it really depends. That being said, you should run annual disaster recovery tests, at the very least. Your disaster readiness depends on every employee’s understanding of the current disaster recovery plan, which they can ultimately only achieve after familiarisation with the disaster recovery testing process. And when factoring in employee turnover, testing every year helps acclimate any new hires to the proper procedures and protocol, thereby helping you fine-tune your clients’ disaster response.

Document outcomes

Strong disaster recovery documentation starts with a disaster recovery plan, which should outline everything anyone would need to know in the event of an emergency. This includes contact information, a detailed outline of the steps and procedures that individuals need to follow in order to activate a disaster recovery, expected time frames for recovering data and more.

Only when your response policy is put to the test, can you adequately assess the effectiveness of a disaster recovery plan. Maybe certain directions are unclear and create friction across teams. Document any and all outcomes during and after testing. What worked? What didn’t? Where were the failure points? Why did those failures occur? How do you address these in your plan? Were any employees or team leads unavailable? Etc. Seemingly minor details like this can mean everything when the clock is ticking and your business continuity is at stake.

Update DR plans

Finally, update your disaster recovery plans as necessary. This testing is useless if you don’t do anything with the data you record. It’s not enough to simply remember what to do next time around. Disaster recovery readiness is ongoing. Continue to frequently revisit and strengthen your disaster recovery plans so that testing runs smoother going forward.

Source: http://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/2016/oct/28/4-essentials-msps-forget-when-disaster-recovery-testing/