Will Your Disaster Recovery Plans Work As Planned?

By Niraj Zaveri, Senior Manager, Storage and Availability Management Group, Symantec

Losing mission-critical data and seeing applications come to a standstill are likely to constitute a nightmare scenario for today's IT organizations. Yet, the constant evolution of the typical IT infrastructure creates a moving target for organizations that are also tasked with supporting more and more applications while meeting increasingly strict recovery time objectives (RTOs) as well as recovery point objectives (RPOs).

Indeed, the typical IT infrastructure is characterized by a complex web of interdependencies, and the natural consequence of today's most common IT conditions can have a significant impact on the organization. For example, configuration drift, incomplete disaster recovery testing, and data center migrations can have a negative effect on the organization by impairing application recoverability and business continuity, prolonging downtime, and introducing unidentified risks.

By replacing cumbersome, less effective traditional tools and practices with automated disaster recovery testing and monitoring, IT organizations can significantly improve the success of their disaster recovery preparedness. With an automated system that can automatically monitor the disaster recovery environment, analyze and report on vulnerabilities, and offer remediation recommendations to close configuration gaps, IT can be sure that their recovery plan continues to be effective now and into the future.