IT Disaster Recovery Planning For Dummies®

Chapter 6. Planning Facilities Protection and Recovery

This chapter focuses on the recovery of facilities—information processing facilities, mostly, but also work locations for critical personnel. You can't plan just where the computers will go: You must also plan where people will work. Although this is an IT-centric book, you can't take people completely out of the equation. Even if others in the organization are doing the business-and process-centric business continuity and disaster recovery planning that includes alternate work locations for all categories of personnel, I still give 'em an honorable mention here—this book primarily talks about recovering IT systems, but we all know that people need to have a place to work, too.

Protecting facilities can help an organization reduce or eliminate the effects of a disaster, improving the chances that an organization will survive a disaster—the overarching objective of DR planning.

This chapter discusses various strategies for alternate processing sites—places where you can get computers up and running after a disaster strikes so critical business processes that rely on information systems can resume functioning.

Protecting Processing Facilities

Information processing facilities are high concentrations of computers and equipment that support critical business processes. Within a single room, equipment supporting virtually all of an organization's critical processes is usually stacked on special equipment racks placed side by side, with ...