Having A Server Disaster Recovery Plan Goes A Long Way
A crash that occurs on your network server may seem like an overwhelming disaster, unless you have a server disaster recovery system. Even though disasters cannot be predicted or avoided, having a server disaster recovery system may help contain the problem and limit the negative impact it has on your data.
A survey covering 50 companies that had approximately 20 employees revealed the fact that none of them had a server disaster recovery system. In most cases, the office manager in charge of the backup tape didn't even bother to put it in so they had no way of backing up the data. Such irresponsible actions might very well leave the company completely unprepared in the face of disaster and, if occurs, precious data will be lost and the company has to rebuild it from scratch.
If your company doesn't have a server disaster recovery plan, then the implementation of one is in order. First of all, a good server disaster recovery plan has to be prepared to deal with common and uncommon problems that may occur. For example, hackers that are out to steal data from your company or just use your server for their own purposes could destroy important data in the attempt of covering their tracks.
Computer viruses should also be included in a server disaster recovery plan. Even if you think that your anti-virus system and your personal firewall can handle anything is thrown at them because databases that are being updated everyday and there is no way a virus can get to your server; that is gross overestimation of the software's capabilities. Even if your anti-virus software is up to date and configured properly, new potent viruses appear every day and it would be a mistake to be so sure of yourself as not to have a server disaster recovery plan as a back-up solution. It is also advisable to have specialized IT staff that can advise you about how to best protect your network from attacks, be it viruses, crackers, hackers or industrial espionage.
Another way disasters occur is power surges. Without a good server disaster recovery plan, the company has to pay a great amount of money to data recovery services in order to salvage the data from their burnt hard drives. In order to prevent power failures, the company should purchase additional power sources for at least the network server, if not the entire network. This way, the server will have time to save all the data and be shut down properly without any harm coming to it.
Natural disasters are another common source of data loss. If there is no server disaster recovery plan, fire or water affecting the building is most likely to destroy the entire database, so make sure your server is correctly connected to an UPS.
Unsupervised System Administration Errors are the most frequent way that server disaster recovery companies meet their customers. If there is no one to check the current events in the log of the servers, errors tend to have a way of multiplying exponentially. Even the most advanced server disaster recovery disk systems have to be properly installed and supervised in order to function properly. This is one of the reasons you need specialized IT personal. Also, it is a good idea to export your important server data online in order to prevent their loss.
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