• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
Carbon60

Carbon60

The Managed Cloud Difference

  • Show Search
  • Contact Us
  • Get Started
Hide Search
  • Cloud Adoption
    Cloud Adoption

    Starting or continuing on your cloud journey — whether public, private or hybrid — is a complex undertaking. But no matter your company size or industry, our cloud consulting experts can help with end-to-end solutions to plan, migrate and operate your business in the cloud.

    • Cloud Readiness Assessment

      Chart a new course for your IT environment with a Cloud Readiness Assessment. With a proven process, we take into consideration your technology, people and business strategy and tailor a public, private or hybrid cloud environment that will set your organization up for success.

      Learn more
    • Cloud Migration Services

      Cloud migration can transform your business and give you a competitive edge – when done properly. Our cloud experts will help you move complex workloads to the right cloud environment, the right way – tailored for your specific needs.

      Learn more
    • Cloud Launchpad
    • Modernization
    • Cloud Security & Compliance
  • Managed Cloud
    Managed Cloud

    Get the most out of the cloud and keep your IT team out of the weeds. Gain predictability and control around security, compliance, agility, reliability, performance – and cost – by tapping into our standard-setting managed cloud services.

    • Managed Private Cloud

      Safe, stable, fast, compliant, secure and fully managed – get a reliable and data sovereign cloud infrastructure platform for your applications.

      Learn more
    • Managed Public Cloud

      Experience matters. Whether you choose Managed AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, we can take care of the heavy lifting while you focus on your business.

      Learn more
    • Cloud Backup
    • Cloud Disaster Recovery
    • Security
    • Managed Public Cloud
    • Cloud Disaster Recovery
    • Applications
  • Industries
    Industries

    When it comes to financial services, healthcare, public sector and technology – there is simply no room for error or uncertainty when it comes to data security and compliance. There are specific and important considerations that we are well-versed in navigating. We’re trusted by governments and organizations to safely house mission-critical functions every day.

    • Financial Services

      Increase go-to-market speed, while meeting SOC2, PCI-DSS and OSFI B10 regulatory and organizational obligations.

      Learn more
    • Healthcare

      Get secure, scalable high-performance data, while improving the patient experience and addressing every compliance and privacy requirement.

      Learn more
    • Public Sector
    • Technology
  • Partners
    Partners

    Simply put – the right technology and the right platform is the one that’s right for your business. We’re highly certified and experienced in the major public clouds – so regardless of complexity, customization or preference – we’re well-equipped to have your back every step of the way.

    • AWS

      AWS Premier Partner with 100+ AWS certifications and counting.

      Learn more
    • Microsoft Azure

      Gold Microsoft Azure Partner with core competencies and certifications.

      Learn more
    • Google Cloud
    • VMware
  • Insights
    Insights

    Sharing knowledge and expertise is a big part of how we’ve evolved - and how we help our customers.

    • Blog

      Stay up to date with the latest trends and developments in the fast-moving world of digital transformation.

      Read
    • Events

      Make sure to join us for our next event and connect with cloud experts who have a lot to share.

      Attend
    • Resources

      Your toolkit to do a deeper dive with case studies, info sheets, checklists and more.

      Explore
  • About
    About

    We’re on a mission to bring digital transformation to more businesses, by making forward-thinking cloud strategy – and high-performance cloud services – more accessible.

    • Leadership

      Meet the leadership team who are driving our vision forward.

      Learn more
    • About Carbon60

      Learn more about who we are, and how we help our customers evolve with confidence.

      Learn more
    • Careers
    • News
  • Contact Us
  • Get Started

Planning For the Unexpected: The IT Disaster Recovery Plan Checklist

March 10, 2021

Disasters can’t always be predicted, but they should be expected. Whether it’s a tornado, hurricane, cyber-attack or human error, anything can happen at any time and disaster often comes when you least expect it. Consulting an IT disaster recovery plan checklist will help to ensure that your organization is prepared.

You should be able to answer this question confidently: If a fire consumes your office overnight, or some other catastrophic event occurs, can you be up and running again in some capacity and do so quickly? 

To get back to business as soon as possible, you need to have access to data and systems to stay connected with your employees and customers.

Across all industries and organizational sizes, the average cost of downtime per hour is $250,000. Downtime also indirectly impacts your brand and reputation while simultaneously contributing to the loss of productivity as your team focuses on responding.

This IT disaster recovery plan checklist covers what you’ll need in order to restore operations with minimal interruption and avoid excessive financial loss.

1. Determine Your Disaster Recovery Objectives

Start with your organization’s tolerance for recovery. Consider the worst-case-scenario and estimate how much downtime you can afford to endure to develop a time-frame for how fast data and systems will need to be recovered. Doing this first will help you determine the disaster recovery strategy from a technical and operational perspective.

You’ll need to set recovery time objectives (RTO) –– the amount of time it takes to recover all of your applications –– and recovery point objectives (RPO), which is the age of the data that you would need to recover for your organization to resume normal operations.

When setting objectives and the foundation for your plan, it’s critical to know your baseline information to keep data recovery costs contained. At a minimum, it’s important to identify what needs to be recovered and how quickly to get the business back on track.

2. Designate a Disaster Recovery Team

Disaster recovery requires an organization-wide effort. It’s a must that you designate a team to execute your plan by outlining the roles, responsibilities and duties that need to be taken care of in the event of a disaster. 

From executives to IT staff to frontline employees, everyone has a part to play, whether that involves making difficult decisions, handling high-level technical tasks, communicating with customers or contacting vendors.

Each person in the company should be aware of what will be expected of them in a disaster event. Assign alternate backups in case someone is unavailable or unwilling to fulfill the responsibility.  

Be sure to document your disaster recovery process, providing detailed instructions so your team will know exactly what to do from start to finish.

3. Take a Technology and Data Inventory

Keep a complete inventory of your necessary hardware and software on-hand, as well as any technical support details and vendor contact information you may need. Classify which hardware and software are critical to getting the business back up and running immediately versus what can wait until a later date. Your plan should also include what equipment or devices your employees will need and when.

Additionally, it’s crucial to pinpoint which business-critical or sensitive data and documents would pose a disastrous threat to your business if lost or if the data is breached. This will help you see exactly what needs to be protected and at what priority.

4. Establish Offsite Backup Sites

You’ll need to identify the backup locations where your business will actually operate. This can be a work from home plan or keeping a running list of alternative office space availability. It may mean finding temporary spaces to run various parts of your business—all with the technology in place that enables your team to work remotely.  

You’ll also need to identify offsite backup disaster recovery sites that can support the emergency relocation of critical hardware and software, where your organization’s applications and essential data can be moved during a disaster event. 

The disaster recovery plan must also prepare for failback, meaning how you’ll restore operations at your primary site after things have been transferred to a disaster recovery site during failover. Disaster recovery sites are only meant to run temporarily and not intended for regular operations.

Keep in mind, implementing these aspects of any disaster recovery continuity plan is typically complex and costly.

5. Have a Data Recovery Plan

Identify which disaster recovery method will help you best meet your objectives. As not all data is equal, determine if the right path would be a full-system recovery, a file-based recovery or something else. 

The data recovery plan you put in place should be tested extensively and often. Simply developing a plan to sit on the shelf as insurance isn’t enough. Testing at least a portion of the plan on an annual basis ensures that your customers, team and partners are prepared. It also reveals any areas that need improvement within the application, roles, infrastructure teams and more. 

A managed service provider who offers Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) helps to simplify your data recovery plan and make sure your most business-critical data is easily recovered.

At Carbon60, we know from experience that data recovery plans are different for each organization, which is how our disaster recovery engineers are able to guide clients through the entire process from design to implementation. 

6. Create a Crisis Communication Plan

In the event of a disaster, you’ll need a clear plan to communicate with employees, customers, vendors, suppliers and the media. Transparency is key, as your stakeholders will be concerned about any data outage or breach. Knowing how you’re handling the situation will help to put their minds at ease and protect your organization. 

Many companies find it helpful to proactively create a crisis media kit and templates for internal communication in advance of crises happening so you can communicate swiftly and address concerns before they escalate.  

IT Disaster Recovery Plan Next Steps

Keep in mind that every disaster recovery plan is imperfect, but it’s important to have a plan in place that you can revisit, improve and strive to leave no stone unturned. 

This IT disaster recovery plan checklist covers the essentials, but it’s just a start.

Disaster recovery planning and preparedness is always a work in process and your plan will need to be continuously tested and reevaluated. Run through the checklist often and update your plan as needed.

Many organizations don’t have the internal resources, skills or bandwidth, to plan and implement a disaster recovery solution. Working with outside vendors that specialize in disaster recovery ensures you’re factoring their experience and insights into your plan, offering tried and true protection and support that will not put your company at risk.

To find out if Carbon60’s DR-as-a-Service is the right solution for your organization, contact us to learn more.

Carbon60 is an MSP dedicated to helping businesses maximize the performance and security of their core application infrastructure with an agnostic cloud approach using public and hosted private clouds.  A partner with both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure along with major cloud and data centre technology companies, we have the experience and the expertise to support organizations wherever they might be on their cloud journey.

Disaster Recovery, The Carbon60 Blog

Subscribe to receive Carbon60 news

Stay up to date on insights, blog articles, events and services from Carbon60 delivered to your inbox.

Subscribe
Carbon60
  • Cloud Adoption
    • Cloud Readiness Assessment
    • Cloud Migration Services
    • Cloud Launchpad
    • Modernization
    • Cloud Security & Compliance
  • Managed Cloud
    • Managed Private Cloud
    • Managed Public Cloud
    • Cloud Backup
    • Cloud Disaster Recovery
    • Security
    • Applications
  • Industries
    • Financial Services
    • Healthcare
    • Public Sector
    • Technology
Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on Twitter Follow us on YouTube

© Copyright Carbon60 2023

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Contact Us