Prioritize your backup

It doesn't matter what how big or small your organization is; determining the most critical information to be included in backups is step one for DR planning. Regardless of what type of OS and network architecture make up an IT environment, the most critical information to be included in backups will always be your business critical application data.

Related information Katrina-affected business gets back Ontrack   Strategic Storage: DR planning blueprint   Advanced Backup School

Beyond that, any information (or data) that cannot easily be recreated should be included in the backups. For example, many question the practice of backing up OS binaries since an OS can be reinstalled just as easily as it can be restored. Besides, you typically need an OS before you can restore anything (including the OS itself). However, any hardware, software or network configuration information should be backed up in some fashion if recreating it requires a lot of time and effort.

The order of priority for information backup after business critical data would be: The backup server configuration information (including the media catalog) since this will likely be the first thing you would restore following a disaster. Then, network configuration, assuming you will be restoring over the network and finally, configuration information based on system criticality.

For more information:

New backup strategies

About the author: Pierre Dorion is a certified business continuity professional for Mainland Information Systems Inc.

Rate this Tip To rate tips, you must be a member of SearchStorage.com. Register now to start rating these tips. Log in if you are already a member. BROWSE BY TAG Data Protection,   Disaster recovery and planning,   VIEW ALL TAGS Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us    RELATED CONTENT Disaster recovery and planning Backup in a snap: A guide to snapshot technologies Storage Decisions Chicago 2009 Session Downloads Storage Decisions Session Downloads: Disaster Recovery Track (Chicago 2009) Storage Decisions Session Downloads: Data Retention & Retrieval Track (Chicago 2009) More testing, more confidence for DR plans The under-over on DR Best storage Products of the Year 2008 Disaster recovery site options DR for virtualized servers Storage Decisions San Francisco 2008 Session Downloads RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary application-aware storage  (SearchStorage.com) Backup and recovery: Do you speak geek?  (WhatIs.com) bare metal restore  (SearchStorage.com) cold backup  (SearchStorage.com) continuous data protection  (SearchStorage.com) hot backup  (SearchStorage.com) online backup  (SearchStorage.com) recovery  (SearchStorage.com) recovery point objective  (WhatIs.com) recovery time objective  (WhatIs.com) RELATED RESOURCES 2020software.com, trial software downloads for accounting software, ERP software, CRM software and business software systems Search Bitpipe.com for the latest white papers and business webcasts Whatis.com, the online computer dictionary DISCLAIMER: Our Tips Exchange is a forum for you to share technical advice and expertise with your peers and to learn from other enterprise IT professionals. TechTarget provides the infrastructure to facilitate this sharing of information. However, we cannot guarantee the accuracy or validity of the material submitted. You agree that your use of the Ask The Expert services and your reliance on any questions, answers, information or other materials received through this Web site is at your own risk.