GuideData centres
Testing your disaster recovery plan
By Inara Crest Engineering 1 min read
A recovery plan that has never been tested is a hope. Regular, scoped tests prove you can restore systems in the time you need.
Most organisations have backups. Fewer have proved they can restore a working system from them, within an acceptable time, after a real failure.
1. Define targets for each system
- **Recovery time objective (RTO):** how long the system can be unavailable.
- **Recovery point objective (RPO):** how much data, measured in time, you can afford to lose.
2. Document the recovery steps
Write step-by-step procedures for restoring each critical system, including credentials, dependencies and the order of recovery.
3. Test at increasing scale
- Restore individual files and databases regularly.
- Restore a complete server to an isolated environment.
- Periodically fail over a critical system to the recovery site.
4. Measure and record
Time each test and compare it with the RTO. Record what went wrong — missing passwords, outdated steps, slow downloads — and fix it.
5. Keep copies off site
Follow the 3-2-1 approach: three copies, two different media, one off site. At least one copy should be protected from deletion or encryption by ransomware.
See our data centre and managed IT services.
About the author
Inara Crest Engineering
Engineering team
Written by the Inara Crest Technologies engineering team, who design, install and support software, network, security, power and data centre systems for organisations in Kenya and East Africa.