Companies are better prepared for disasters - Storage Technology Magazine

Companies are better prepared for disasters

More than 50% of the respondents to our disaster recovery (DR) survey are very confident that their DR plans will save their company from disaster. But one-third don't even test their plans.

Whatever you call it -- an expensive insurance policy that you'll probably never use or just a pain in the neck -- disaster recovery (DR) planning and testing is a necessary evil for data storage managers. Two years ago when we first ran a DR survey, just slightly more than half of the respondents said their plans were tested regularly, but this time around that number jumped to 66%. Of course, "regularly" is relative; 59% on our current survey said they test at least twice year, but that's down considerably from the 70% reported in 2008. So while more companies are actually testing their DR plans, they aren't doing it as often. But perhaps testing less frequently has its own rewards: 47% of respondents said they met all of their recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) when they tested vs. only 31% a couple of years ago. That suggests some pretty good planning and testing, which is probably why 51% of those surveyed said they were very confident their plans would allow their firm to weather a disaster without significant business impact. So what about the 33% of those surveyed who don't test their DR plans? People and money are the problem, with 27% claiming they lack the staff to do DR and another 15% citing lack of funds.

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52%
Have disaster recovery sites less than 100 miles from their data center

"DR site set up two years ago and apparently never tested . . . doh!" Survey respondent



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

This was first published in June 2010

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