Need to Interview IT Professional Regarding Disaster Recovery Planning

OK, I have a few minutes..  here is my short list:  :)

1.     Would you consider Disaster Recovery planning to be important for businesses and why?

Absolutely.  "Plan for the unexpected" is always the best way to proceed in an IT environment.  Without a plan, when disaster strikes, the least you can expect is downtime for your workforce, producing 'opportunity cost' that can substantially affect the bottom line of the company.  Lost revenues, customer alienation, etc., can all be traced to network downtime.  

2.     What types of businesses should have a Disaster Recovery plan and why?

There are no businesses that I know of that will not benefit from a DR plan.  If you leverage IT for productivity, then you need to plan for disasters.  The only business that does not need such planning is one that does not use IT, or server resources.

3.     What types of Disaster Recovery planning and implementation have you done in your own business?

We have a written plan, use SAN storage devices (HP), and Veritas for our backups.  We also use Offisite Storage of all our backups, with a plan for rotation.

4.     What network related items do you consider as being mission critical to protect in your own company and for businesses in general?

Every part of the network falls under this.  We have spare hardware parts, backups for our Cisco Router / Switch configuration files, and backup all data every day.

5.     What could be the potential implications of a business not having a disaster recovery plan? Could you relate that to your own business?

Downtime = loss of productivity = loss of revenue = lower profits

And as stated above, this could prove fatal to customer relations in some types of networks.

6.     Are there any types or sizes of businesses where a disaster recovery plan wouldn’t be important? Please explain.

NO!  As stated above, any business that leverages technology should have a plan.

7.     In your opinion, what areas of IT must be considered in a DR plan? Please explain.

Every area of IT is important.  Network infrastructure, Data, hardware, etc....

8.     Who is best fit to write a DR plan and whose advice should be taken into account?

In most cases, any decent Network Admin should be able to plan for this.  But, the admin must be just that, and not just a support technician that is not familiar with all aspects of the Network.

9.     Has a disaster recovery plan ever been a life saver for you or anyone else that you know in the industry? If so, how did the plan help?

Oh yes.  More than once.  In one case it was lost data due to a SAN issue, and we had to recover via the offsite tapes.  Took us 48 hours to bring it back on-line, but without a plan we may have suffered many more days of downtime, and with a user-base of 800, just the cost of users not doing their jobs would have been significant.  Another was a simple DDOS attack that shut down our external lines.  We had a plan for that also...

10.     What disasters do you think would be the most likely to cause havoc to your businesses IT infrastructure?

Obviously the worst is data loss, for our database holds all contract information for our company.  With gross revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars, this is a no-brainer.  But just having our servers go down is significant.  Even a NIC or a switchport that goes bad can cause real problems.

11.     If a major disaster just affected your business, how do you think your businesses IT infrastructure would look now and a month from now?

Major?  Like, say a fire in our NOC?  For the short term, it would create havoc, but in a month, with a plan in place, we would be up and running again.

12.     Would people at your company be able to work if a disaster prevented them from reaching the office and if so, how would they work?

We have Cisco Concentrators that allow VPN connections, use Citrix on top of a 2003 TS server, and all would be well.  We are already prepared for something like this.

13.     What technologies help you protect critical data in your business?

Backup:  Veritas
Very strong firewalls
Cisco VPNs and Terminal Services (Citrix) for remote access
Internal Security Policies and 2003 ADUC Group Policy

14.     Does your company spend money on DR planning and implementation and if so what percentage of the IT budget does it take?

Our IT CIO takes care of this, and is not part of my knowledge base.  But, we do spend the money, and take the time.

15.     Is it money well spent and would you like to see more or less spent?

What can I say?  Yes.  and we would always like more money for this..

16.     Would you like to see the money spent elsewhere instead? Please explain.

We would always like more money in our budget.  Love to have more backup servers, money for training, etc..  but sometimes it just is not there to spend.

17.     What advice would you give to an IT manager who was just tasked with creating a DR plan?

Think it out first, consider every part of the network infrastructure, and do not overlook the worst case scenarios...

1.     Would you consider Disaster Recovery planning to be important for businesses and why?
Yes. Imagine if i walked in to your office and pulled the cables out of your servers. What would you do if you had no DR. Years of work lost or relyring
on a possibly no good backup.....What if your Building burnt down?

2.     What types of businesses should have a Disaster Recovery plan and why?
All Businesses should in some way, have a DR plan. Ranging from Tape backups through to full hot site scenarios. Depending on business size
and budget.

3.     What types of Disaster Recovery planning and implementation have you done in your own business?
We host multiple hot spare servers for numerous clients. For our selves we rely heavily on a backup schedule and an offsite DR set of servers


4.     What network related items do you consider as being mission critical to protect in your own company and for businesses in general?
Router, firewall and switch config are probably one of the biggest. Hardware you can replace, config you have to rebuild

5.     What could be the potential implications of a business not having a disaster recovery plan? Could you relate that to your own business?
If we were to lose our servers and have no DR plan then we may as well close the doors as there is no point coming back and starting again. However, with a plan, if we fall over, we work temporarily off site,
and the only downtime we realistically have is the transfer over to the hot spares

6.     Are there any types or sizes of businesses where a disaster recovery plan wouldn’t be important? Please explain.
I couldnt really think of any myself, everyone these days has at one stage lost something

7.     In your opinion, what areas of IT must be considered in a DR plan? Please explain.
Every aspect. Hardware, Software, Data, Configurations....in a proper plan they should all be taken into consideration.

8.     Who is best fit to write a DR plan and whose advice should be taken into account?
Team. Not one person should be responsible for writing. Everone will have different ideas and experties. The manager have one set of ideas and the tech may have a completely different one. All are valid.

9.     Has a disaster recovery plan ever been a life saver for you or anyone else that you know in the industry? If so, how did the plan help?
We support a client that i will keep nameless. This client is a massive player in the banking industry. We also host their DR server. It takes less than an hour to have them completely working as they were in
the office, from servers hosted in ours. We are talking completely functional. It has saved them once and that is how they justify the cost each year

10.     What disasters do you think would be the most likely to cause havoc to your businesses IT infrastructure?
Physical Dangers are a reality. Although usually its more a component failing that can destory data and cause downtime. Dont forget user errors as well!

11.     If a major disaster just affected your business, how do you think your businesses IT infrastructure would look now and a month from now?
if it died now. I would be in trouble as the guy with the servers isnt in the office lol! In a month time, we would be in better shape than we are now as it would be all new nice fat hardware!

12.     Would people at your company be able to work if a disaster prevented them from reaching the office and if so, how would they work?
For us no issue. for our clients. Major Issue - hence the hot spare

13.     What technologies help you protect critical data in your business?
DFS, Hardware backups, multiple servers, config backups, offsite servers etc

14.     Does your company spend money on DR planning and implementation and if so what percentage of the IT budget does it take?
We plan but i am not privvy to that info yet :) new company and all :)

15.     Is it money well spent and would you like to see more or less spent?
Its a hard statement to make. Some people can invest thousands and never use it. yet others can invest a few hundred and yet save themselves the initial cost tenfold when something goes wrong

16.     Would you like to see the money spent elsewhere instead? Please explain.
Fast computer for me :) no, in all honesty, DR is a massive area and i would reather see more spent than less

17.     What advice would you give to an IT manager who was just tasked with creating a DR plan?
Look at all aspects and look at technologies available to make it a quick and easy recovery plan. Virtual Servers are a massive tool. Dont forget configs, licences, user data, application data. A lot of the time DR can be an initial cost and thats it. Your business type really dictates your DR plan and requirements