Migration disaster-recovery options
Even the best planning for any deployment can result in disaster for users and critical data. In order to be completely prepared, include data recovery planning within your plan. Questions for your team to ask are:
• How do we handle an unexpected event during the deployment process?
• Do we have enough break-points within the automation to catch errors?
• Can a backup be performed before the deployment?
• How much time or resources would it take to recover from migration disaster?
• What alternatives do we have if there is a hardware failure during the migration?
• What data recovery vendors do we have relationships with that can get back our data in a timely way and also maintain quality?
Being prepared for the worst ensures the greatest success. Think seriously about the disaster recovery side of the project and build in data safety processes so that data loss is minimized.
In the event that a deployment causes widespread accidental data loss, or that key systems or workstations are affected, know when to stop and get professional data recovery assistance.
Many times data loss goes from serious to disastrous because inexperienced IT staff work to resolve the problem. After running software found on the Internet in a panic, the data loss becomes more severe. When all internal options are exhausted, a professional data recovery firm is finally engaged. Not only has precious time been lost, the damage to the data has increased or becomes unrecoverable.
All data recovery companies and offerings are not the same. Data recovery companies that claim to specialize in data recovery, yet in reality use off-the-shelf recovery tools are far more limited in their capabilities.