Practical Disaster Recovery: Strategies, Methods, and Planning for IT Resilience

 This document outlines a comprehensive approach to disaster recovery (DR) as an essential component of IT resilience and business continuity. It presents practical strategies, methods, and tools to ensure that organizations can recover quickly and effectively from system failures, cyber-attacks, or natural disasters.

The paper defines the four critical phases of disaster recovery:

1. Planning and Preparation – Establishing DR goals, identifying critical systems, creating documentation, and setting up infrastructure.
2. Operating System Recovery – Repartitioning, formatting, and reinstalling the OS to restore the system environment.
3. Environment Configuration Recovery – Restoring system configurations to their pre-disaster state.
4. Application and Data Restoration – Recovering applications and user data to fully restore operations.

It evaluates a range of disaster recovery methods suitable for different environments, including:

• Manual Disaster Recovery (Windows/UNIX)
• Automated System Recovery (ASR)
• Enhanced Automated Disaster Recovery (EADR)
• One Button Disaster Recovery (OBDR)
• Disk Delivery Disaster Recovery (DDDR)
• Vendor-supported and third-party recovery tools

The document also emphasizes the importance of the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) within the broader Business Continuity Plan (BCP). Key DRP components include:

• Defined recovery goals (RTOs and RPOs)
• Assigned roles and responsibilities
• IT asset inventory
• Backup and restoration procedures
• Hot site configuration and use of cloud-based solutions

Modern tools such as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) are highlighted as cost-effective, scalable, and secure options that enhance recovery capabilities while reducing infrastructure complexity.

The paper concludes that proactive disaster recovery planning, continuous testing, and leveraging cloud technologies are crucial for minimizing downtime, maintaining regulatory compliance, protecting customer data, and ensuring operational continuity in any organization.

Read the full paper on:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390665961_Practical_Disaster_Recovery_Strategies_Methods_and_Planning_for_IT_Resilience