Recovery Strategy Development & Recommendation

At CSI we give our clients choices.  Nearly every DR consulting vendor has products they are trying to sell their clients during a disaster recovery consulting engagement.  Fact is consultants from many companies are told to sell offerings and only make certain recommendations while consulting.   Sometimes the client may need the product, sometimes they do not, and the consultant is hurting the client by being bias. This may be a vendors facility/hotsite or a software package or a certain type of computing hardware or a certain type of communication equipment or satellite service or the latest backup, failover or virtualization software that is being pushed on a client.

CSI educates and explains many recovery options from several vendors and we work to bring

out the truth (pro's and con's) concerning solutions that are available in the ever changing disaster recovery marketplace.  We make recommendations about several vendors offerings to be evaluated concerning recovery strategies. Continuity Solutions, Inc. is truly unbiased.

We work with your staff to define your recovery requirements.  We can help you examine the costs and potential benefits associated with recovering each function or computer application.  

Some organizations base plans off the recovery strategies,  others determine recovery strategy during or after a plan is developed.  For instance a plan may be developed for a bare metal restore situation then migrate over time to a more specific recovery facility plan or new computer network infrastructure plan.

Some typical requirements might include:

Alternate site arrangements - (We solicit vendors on your behalf and help you make good choices)  

• Vendor Hot Site, Shared Hot Site, Company Owned Hot Site 

• Mobile Facilities

• Service Bureau, Office or Warehouse Space, Reciprocal Agreement

• Equipment Leasing

• Cold Site, Warm Site, Work Area Recovery 

• Call Centers, Mail Room, Specialized Equipment  

Computer hardware and software components - (A detailed network design is typically involved with these options or a high level assessment and recommendation is available).  

• Continuous or high availability- mirroring, replication, clustering, virtualization

• Electronic-Vaulting Disk to disk (SAN, IP SAN, NAS, ATA)

• Disk to tape

• Collocation facilities / Alternate sites

• Grid technology

           Communications and network equipment

           Unique and/or irreplaceable equipment

           Environmental and off-site requirements

           Resources: staff, operations support, office supplies, life support (food, water, shelter)

           Emergency relocation costs

We combine your organization-specific information (the recovery requirements data and information from the Risk Assessment and the Business Impact Analysis) with information from vendors and independent research to develop viable recovery strategies for your organization.  We consider every recovery option or operational improvements that are possible for you, given the resources available to your organization.  We eventually present this Recovery Strategy Recommendation as a comprehensive decision-making tool.

After management makes decisions regarding recovery strategies CSI may submit an updated recovery strategy recommendation as part of our CASP program.  This ongoing review identifies flaws in the recovery strategies or even elements that were not considered or left out. We may make suggestions to implement specific Scenario Based plans.