Misc

More testing, more confidence for DR plans

According to the latest Storage magazine survey, more companies are testing their disaster recovery (DR) plans regularly, and storage managers are more confident that their DR plans can avert a significant business disruption

By Rich Castagna

Disaster recovery (DR) planning is a work in progress and this month's Snapshot survey results bear that out. More respondents are testing their DR plans regularly, but overall it's still only 59%. Non-testers cite lack of a DR site, inadequate staffing or lack of funds for not testing. But a tough economy may be contributing, as staff and money issues rose by 7 points and 5 points, respectively. Staffing issues are also affecting DR site management -- last year, 48% of respondents said their own staff ran their DR sites vs. 27% this year. Still, 38% are very confident that their DR plan can avert significant business impact vs. 32% in 2008. That's bolstered by the 49% who have met their testing RTOs/RPOs. But for the sheer number of applications successfully recovered, the numbers are less encouraging, with 35% claiming to recover all applications vs. 57% last year.

"We do a DR test of each of the individual applications before they go into production, but doing the full suite of apps for all business units simultaneously has always been cost prohibitive."-- Survey respondent

BIO: Rich Castagna (rcastagna@storagemagazine.com) is Editorial Director of the Storage Media Group.

This was first published in March 2009

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