The importance of a DRP and the data that supports the need of it

25 Sep The importance of a DRP and the data that supports the need of it

Last weekend I was involved in a DRP/BCP  (Disaster Recovery Plan/Business Continuity Plan) for a client, which is basically planning out your worst case scenario , e.g. your Data site being hit by a tornado and loosing everything there, and what actions would you take in case this should happen.

And even though you might already have a DRP , putting it into action will help you find out which steps are failing in your SOP (Standard Operation Procedure) and only then you will be able to update them and take a corrective action before your put into a real scenario and you can’t meet your client’s SLA (Service Level Agreement).

Searching for a little more data on the percentages of enterprises that put into action a DRP , I came to find this survey by IOUG (Independent Oracle Users Group) taken this 2012 to more than 350 data professionals , in which 51% of them where database administrators, and what stands out to me are the following regarding a DRP:

• 37% have a Partial formal DRP/BCP in place, only for some type of data.
• 18% have never tested and/or reviewed their BCP/DRP.
• 43% mention that funding and budget constraints is the greatest challenge to managing and planning a DRP/BCP.
• 12% don’t how long,in hours, it will take to restore their data from an unplanned outage.

To me is a little concerning to see anything above 5 or 10%, as from a point of view of a DBA, the most important thing we need to have is the data available, if the data is not available, you are really in a situation that I wouldn’t want to be in.

At the end, if for your client it takes more time to receive or process their data , he can somehow live with this delay of processing, he won’t be happy as it can cause him a loss of money and/or time, but he will be able to manipulate his data, but the question is, what happens if he can never get or process his data, ever?

What I want to get to, is that , if today you don’t have a DRP/BCP in place and tested, get moving and push to get one done, it will help you to detect, correct and even prevent a data outage in your operations and/or data loss, and as well it can help you establish a time SLA in case of a disaster.

So start planning your DRP and find those weaknesses in your architecture, so that instead of coming out a loser you end up being a hero and as well keep your much loved job 🙂 .