Disasters can strike at any time, and sometimes with little to no warning. Recovering from a disaster scenario is significantly easier if a proper Disaster Recovery plan is in place and can help mitigate any potential loss of data, business, or money. Layer 8 Solutions follows a tried-and-true methodology for identifying keep systems, documenting any interdependencies, and creating and managing any runbooks.

While some other Managed IT vendors will only provide a template that must be filled out manually, we work hand-in-hand with our customers to validate all of our Disaster Recovery plans. Taking this process a step further ensures that our completed runbook can be utilized whenever, wherever, and by whomever when needed.

Our services can also extend into running as primary contacts, secondary technicians, or ad-hoc remote-assistance, if your company must declare a disaster event.

Identify RTO and RPO Requirements

Defining the Recovery Time Objective, or RTO, helps in both the design of – and execution towards – recovery goals. A service categorized with an RTO of 8 hours indicates the business can sustain an outage of 8 hours. Defining the Recovery Point Objective, or RPO, helps in the design of backup methodology. That same service categorized with an RPO of 15 minutes indicates the business can only sustain less than 15 minutes worth of data loss.

While it is important to understand RTOs and RPOs and how they impact your business, leave the technical side and architecture in our capable hands. Layer 8 Solutions technicians, with their solid understanding of business best practices, can ultimately shape a strategy that is both comprehensive and cost-effective.

Identifying Critical Infrastructure

Layer 8 Solutions architects help identify the “family jewels” of your company by asking the right questions to the right people. After interviewing team members to identify the key data, systems, and services required to sustain the business, we help document all systems, connections, permissions, and steps required to restore the business operations to a useable state.

From Internet and network connectivity to server operating systems, applications, and databases, Layer 8 Solutions will help you navigate through Disaster Recovery!

Documentation

One of the most often overlooked or ignored parts of IT work is writing documentation. Layer 8 Solutions knows that organized, well-written, and up-to-date documentation is worth its weight in gold.

After completion of any Disaster Recovery project, a final technical review along with a full table-top exercise helps solidify all the positives included with the documentation runbook.

Backups

Each environment is unique in terms of infrastructure and needs, and should be treated as such. Layer 8 Solutions has used all major backup solutions and can help you understand the pros and cons to each. From on-premise tape and disk backups, to offsite vaults and Cloud providers, we’re here to help.

Through completion of the Disaster Recovery project, we will also offer a full assessment of you current backup posture.