Custom applications often pose problems for disaster recovery planning that standard software does not. Make sure you know what the most common setbacks are for custom apps. Custom applications are the bane of every Disaster Recovery DR professional I know. These applications are almost always vital to the...

Mike Talon examines the worst-case-scenario disaster situations and how you can prepare a plan to address them. "The Worst Case Scenario," or a total loss of all data-center structures and systems, is the last thing any of us wants to think about. However, it is entirely possible...

Mike Talon offers a system for classifying disaster levels for the data center. Every so often, I like to review a system that has been proposed to classify disasters and potential responses. While nearly everyone involved in disaster recovery DR planning has some idea of the types...

Mike Talon advises you of the many ways you can get valuable input from your peers that will help your professional development as well as improve your disaster recovery plan. Getting help for disaster recovery DR projects can be a daunting task to say the least. In addition...

At some point, you have to decide if local failover options are enough for your organization, or whether you need to add remote failover to protect you from a major disaster. Mike Talon discusses some of the considerations for making that decision. Failing over across a wide-area network is...

Mike Talon discusses some of the disaster recovery planning issues for higher education institutions. Last week, I wrote about protecting data in the K-12 educational environment. Colleges and universities also have some very specific challenges to meet. Generally speaking, higher-education institutions are often larger organizations, sometimes...

Planning and implementing your disaster recovery plan is often a complex process, involving multiple vendors, stakeholders, and communication issues. Hone your project management skills in order to keep track of the process and make sure you are communicating clearly with everyone concerned. Planning for disaster recovery is a long...

Make sure you can contact users who rely on mobile devices when an outage occurs. Disaster Recovery DR planning can often take odd twists and turns. One of the most interesting is what you will do if your mobile users suddenly need to deal with services going...

Find out what your disaster recovery plan must cover in order to comply with current HIPAA regulations. Disaster recovery DR planning often fails to take into consideration how various regulations and compliance issues will impact the firm after a disaster strikes. Though it doesn't impact all businesses,...

If you are an IT professional for a member institution of the FDIC, there are some pretty stringent guidelines for disaster recovery preparation. Make sure you know the questions auditors will be asking when it's your turn to be grilled. Rounding out our discussions of regulatory compliance and ...