In this article we look at creating SQL Disaster Recovery plan which is customized as per your priorities.
For many SQL users, disaster recovery means being able to recover data in the time of a disaster. This is not what disaster recovery is limited to; this is only a part of disaster recovery. In its true sense, disaster recovery involves the ability to revive all SQL related business operations during a disaster. Regular backups too are only a part of the recovery strategy, you need to do more than just backups to recover data during a disaster. You need to develop disaster recovery plan that can protect all SQL related business operations when a disaster strikes.
Here is what your SQL Server Disaster Recovery Plan should include.
The most important thing to keep in mind while creating a Disaster Recovery Plan is, to fully understand what are you creating the plan for, what all do you want to protect under the data recovery plan. While creating the plan you should ensure that it can survive multiple kinds of disasters. And make sure that the team you are building the plan with, understands databases, infrastructure, networking and more. Your team should be all inclusive, with a well experienced project manager. Creating a plan should be done in steps, which are described below.
- Inventory – This step is a top-down approach, it involves creating an inventory for all business processes that need to be considered in the plan. The importance of the processes will keep on reducing as you move downwards, form core processes to non-core processes. After you are done with the inventory, and have a good idea about what all the company does, you then begin mapping the technology resources. When you are done with mapping technology resources, you will know what process needs what technology, and you will then proceed to inventorying the personnel and job roles. After personnel inventory, comes inventorying continuity features and all those features that are currently in place. This is followed by a hardware and infrastructure inventory, and you end this step with the full material inventory.
- Identify Priorities – After you are done creating all the necessary inventories, there are lot of other things that still need to be included in your disaster recovery plan. While creating a disaster recovery plan, you not only have to keep data safe from a disaster, but also your employees. You begin by identifying the most important databases and what level of availability are you willing to assign to each of those databases. After you have decided on the availability of all databases, you have to ensure that there is sufficient power backup with the organization. All generators should be properly working, power-cut are the most common and manageable disasters. Add on to the generator capacity if required, you will not only need running systems but also ACs. Have a ‘foul weather plan’, store data on servers, so that it becomes remotely accessible from homes.
After you are done with these crucial bits of creating a plan, you will have to pass it for approval of funds and other required permissions. Once this is done, you would be able to easily repair corrupt SQL Server files.
Author Introduction:
Victor Simon is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair accdb error and sql recovery software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com
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