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Exploring the Nexus: DRP & Data Management |
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DR Planning.org takes a data management perspective on disaster recovery. While the term "data management" may be unfamiliar, its meaning is straightforward.
 Consider that disaster recovery success is keyed to "time to data." Time to data is the measure of the efficacy of the strategies we develop for recovering our businesses in the wake of an unplanned interruption. Data access restoration, with its many layers of complexity, is the true goal of DR and business continuity.
Consider also that data recovery is usually the procedure that takes the most time in an actual recovery situation. The preponderance of companies that make disaster recovery plans leverage tape backup as the primary mechanism for data protection and recovery. It takes time to recover data from tape to disk drives -- roughly 3 hours per Terabyte with current technology under optimal conditions. (Add encryption, and tape-to-disk restores require roughly 4.3 hours per TB.) As a result, it is not atypical of a recovery effort that systems, networks and end user computing platforms can be recovered fairly rapidly, while data restore holds up the show.
These two points underscore the primacy of data in a DR context.
- To recover successfully, we must have a copy of data required by critical business processes.
- Since this is usually a subset of all data within a company's storage repository, sorting out the critical data from the less critical data is important.
- The definition of data classes is a precursor to effective DR planning.
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Sorting, classifying, and backing up critical data is a Data Management function. So, there, in a nutshell is the nexus between data management and disaster recovery planning.
This site will emphasize and explore this nexus.
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