IT Disaster Recovery Plan Requirement: Challenges and Lessons Learned

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the requirements for developing an IT disaster recovery plan. It begins by outlining the core components of such a plan, emphasizing the importance of structured methods to address unplanned events that threaten IT infrastructure, including networks, software, hardware, personnel, and processes. The study identifies key challenges, such as cloud strategy development, modernizing legacy applications, retaining IT talent, and managing cooling, power, and space. It also highlights the rising risks of prolonged outages and data loss, emphasizing the need for modern recovery and backup solutions. Furthermore, the report explores the increasing frequency of both human-made and natural disasters and their impact on businesses' reliance on technology. It analyzes the implications of human errors and traditional approaches' ineffectiveness, including infrequent data backups and insufficient resources. Finally, the report examines disaster simulation, including physical, logical, and malicious events, and offers real-world examples like F5 networks and Goodwill of Indiana, detailing recovery times and leveraging specific solutions. The overall conclusion stresses the importance of integrating IT disaster recovery plans with business continuity planning, establishing recovery time objectives, and developing technology recovery methods.

Running head: IT DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN REQUIREMENT
Developing an IT Disaster Recovery Plan Requirement
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Developing an IT Disaster Recovery Plan Requirement:
The IT or Information Technology disaster recovery plan delivers the structured method
to react to the unplanned events threatening to the IT infrastructure. This includes the network,
software, hardware, people and processes.
The following study has developed the IT disaster recovery plan necessities. Three
concepts are presented in the study learned from the development of requirement of the IT
disaster recovery plan.
The very first aspect learned from the development of the IT disaster recovery plan are
the top five challenges facing the IT and its opportunities. The first problem is the developing of
the cloud strategy. The chance of success lie here is the quicker migration and transition towards
the cloud with the approach of the real application. Then there are the problems regarding the
modernization of the legacy applications ("Modern Disaster Recovery Workshop: Developing an
IT Disaster Recovery Plan", 2017). Here the insightful technologies and the experienced staff are
helpful in lowering the complicated applications giving rise to the risks. Then there is the
retaining and finding of IT talent. There must be activities with the providers who could deepen
the team bench expertise and strengths.
Next, there is the cooling, power, and space. The on-demand resources have been helpful
in avoiding the stair step buying and the longer time in valuing (Gardner, 2016). Lastly, there is
the modernizing recovery and backup. For this, the access to the new, modern capabilities has
been raising the reliability of the recovery. Thus, the lessons learned are that the risk of the
prolonged outages and the loss of data are rising. The traditional methods have been sufficient

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for the modern businesses (Phillips, 2015). The IT disaster risk has been difficult to explain, and
the disaster recovery or DR projects have been hard to prioritize.
The next element learned is that the disasters, including both the human-made and
natural, have been on the rise. The businesses have been turning to be more dependent on the
technology. This has been making the IT more vital in the current age. The human mistakes have
been the biggest reason behind the IT disasters. There is about sixty percent scope where the
complete DR plan is present. Further, there are five percent more chances that the DR tests are
not passed (Sahebjamnia, Torabi & Mansouri, 2015). The traditional approaches have been
proving to be ineffective. In the conventional methods, the data are infrequently backed up.
Moreover, the depreciated or insufficient resources have been providing the partial return to the
service. In these cases, only one event has been affecting the datacenters, and it has been very
costly to use the talent and capitals.
Lastly, the simulating of the disaster is analyzed. In the physical event, for example, the
fire in the data centre could result in the system to deploy. It could be of three kinds. The first
one is the physical event. Next, there is the logical event. Lastly, there is the malicious event ("IT
Disaster Recovery Plan | Ready.gov", 2017). The impact here is that the leadership shows, as the
case is not solved within a day, the Linkedin profile is needed to be upgraded. To help others to
understand the risks has been a significant issue. The DR simulator has been very active. For
every event, the situation is to be defined first. This must include the drawing of one event card,
downtime card and impact card. There must be attempts to recover from that event (Snedaker,
2013). Two asset cards are needed to be drawn along with two challenge cards. The victory
condition is to reduce the downtime to nil or less. This must be done enough to face the
requirements of the business as revealed in the impact card. For example, the instance of the F5

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networks could be considered (Whitman, Mattord & Green, 2013). Here the data is replicated in
the real time. This is done by utilizing the SQL replication from the F5 Vegas to a second one
hosted at Indy. Here the recovery time of the application is calculated to be lesser than a minute.
It has been leveraging the solutions of F5 Application Traffic Management. The failover has
been wholly automated here. Another instance could be the Goodwill of Indiana (Rossmiller et
al., 2017). Here the data has been replicated in the real time. The recovery time of the application
has been determined to less than an hour.
All the above learning outcomes indicate that an IT disaster recovery plan must be
created in conjunction with any business continuity planning. The recovery time objectives and
the priorities must be developed while the business impact analysis is done. The technology
recovery methods must be created for restoring the applications, hardware, and data in time for
meeting the necessities of business recovery.

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References:
Gardner, B. (2016). An exploratory qualitative inquiry of key indicators on IT disaster recovery
planning (Doctoral dissertation, Capella University).
IT Disaster Recovery Plan | Ready.gov. (2017). Ready.gov. Retrieved 25 October 2017, from
https://www.ready.gov/business/implementation/IT
Modern Disaster Recovery Workshop: Developing an IT Disaster Recovery Plan. (2017).
YouTube. Retrieved 25 October 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=OuibH0n6W9s&t=2128s
Phillips, B. D. (2015). Disaster recovery. CRC press.
Rossmiller, Z., Lawrence, C., Clouse, S. F., & Looney, C. (2017). Teaching an Old Dog New
Tricks: Disaster Recovery in a Small Business Context. Information Systems Education
Journal, 15(2), 13.
Sahebjamnia, N., Torabi, S. A., & Mansouri, S. A. (2015). Integrated business continuity and
disaster recovery planning: Towards organizational resilience. European Journal of
Operational Research, 242(1), 261-273.
Snedaker, S. (2013). Business continuity and disaster recovery planning for IT professionals.
Newnes.
Whitman, M. E., Mattord, H. J., & Green, A. (2013). Principles of incident response and disaster
recovery. Cengage Learning.

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