The importance of DRP

A month ago one of the most important data centers in Europe caught fire. This is located in Strasbourg and is owned by the service provider OVHcloud.

The CPD housed 29,000 servers and served entities such as the Strasbourg airport, the French bitcoin trading platform Coinhouse or the Paris museum at the Pompidou Center, among others. This caused them to suffer interruptions in the access of their web pages and their emails. The first recommendation that OVHcloud gave its customers was to activate their disaster recovery plan, also known as the Disaster Recovery Plan.

But what is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

The DRP serves to protect a company from the effects of an unexpected disaster that could affect its technological infrastructure, such as the aforementioned fire, a cyberattack or a power outage.

Basically, a DRP is the strategy and actions to be followed to restore IT services.

One of the bases of the DRP is the documentation of the system and computer resources. In the event of a disaster, the right person should be contacted quickly. For this reason, a list of users, persons responsible for individual areas and external services, and information about the accommodation service is necessary.

CONTENTS OF A DRP

The contents that make up a Disaster Recovery Plan are as follows. First, it must be determined what is considered an emergency for the business. From here, alarm procedures and information channels are defined. It is also decided what the disaster contingency plans and their subsequent documentation will be. Finally, an emergency prevention plan is made to try to avoid them, as well as a recovery plan for all the facilities.

The last plan mentioned is the one that requires the most work. Any recovery plan must include appropriate solutions depending on the type of system failure. A detailed analysis will show the critical points and will allow to identify the areas that can jeopardize the correct operation of the system. Before doing so, an analysis of all the computer processes must be carried out, the hardware analyzed and the software applications tested.

In order to recover lost data, the best solution is to have a CPD backup. If the business only stores the data in a single location, it will have a greater risk of losing it. That is why having a data center in another location with the replicated data will allow the company to continue operating. As is logical, this CPD should not be in a nearby area since in the event of a natural disaster, it should not be affected as well.

Finally, it must be remembered that it is not enough just to create a DRP, but that it must be constantly updated. In addition, staff must receive training to implement it when necessary. That is why every business should consider whether it is really profitable to do its own DRP or if it prefers to hire an external company to organize it.

Claudia Piera