The recent hack of Createspace has got me wondering. How many web hosts have a "Disaster Recovery Plan"? I have a brother who is a wildland firefighter and the way that they plan for just about every imaginable possibility always impresses me. It seems to me that many hosts respond to disasters (hacks, significant equipment failure, etc.) in an ad hoc fashion. But that is just an impression. So I want to hear from the hosts. Do you have a disaster recovery plan? If you don’t, why don’t you? If you do, did you find that it helped when disaster struck?

Well, if being able to have another server up within 3 hours and backup's loaded after hard drive failure isn't a good emergency plan, i don't know what is :D

Or making a complete OS reinstall, with data backup in less than 3 hours because of a hack.

Do you have a Disaster Recovery Plan?

Of course! Or am I the only one who thinks it's pretty stupid and asking for trouble if no set plans are in place for emergencies? :)

I can think of nothing worse than something going very wrong (hardware fail, etc) and being totally caught out with regard to DC phone numbers, authorised contact lists, etc.

Emergencies are bound to happen at some point and it will be a HUGE help if everyone knows what is going on and things can be done to fix it quickly. This includes:

- all staff having phone and contact details for all other staff and all server providers

- all server providers being informed long beforehand of the details of the staff so they are authorised to deal with them in case of emergency

- clear procedure to inform customers of the situation

I'd recommend to any host to spend some serious time thinking things through to plan for such events. It wouldn't be much good if something happened and everything fell apart.

Touch wood, the full emergency procedure has not been put to use here but there have been a couple of close calls where part of it got a test and things worked quite well under the circumstances. Anyone who knows me will know I'm quite particular about planning ahead so I would hope things will hold together if something went seriously wrong.

I do have a disaster recovery plan. If the Toronto Maple Leafs don't win the Stanley cup in the next 2 years I am going to become an Ottawa Senators fan.

Nice blue, I think you have the best one here.

Back on topic...we have one just in case as well. It can truly save alot if things go wrong.

We have a disaster recovery plan that unfortunately has been utilised too many times.. :(

But have never lost data!

That's why we have servers in two ISPs. Even if we loose the websites we still have working mail and backups from the other.

More the question is why would anyone not have one, And if not when is their psychologist appointment

It depends how big the disaster is :)

I think we'd be ok with the complete shut down/destruction of the primary network/NOC/data centre and backups would be available. That said, it would be an "interesting" procedure.

Hardware/software failures are a walk in the park and downtime should be no more than a couple of hours - if all goes to plan, though it does rely on cooperation from the data centre so we make no garentees...

We run raid 5, and a daily tape backup. Is a bit more expensive but sure saves alot of headaches when a customer fouls on their own site.

DRP is an awesome topic. Search Google for 'disaster recovery plan' or similar and see what I mean. It isn't just a case of backing stuff up every now and again - far from it.

For an insight into the science, take a look at something like:
www.yourwindow.to/business-continuity/

Yuk, I know, but for serious businesses it has to be faced. I hope all my hosts haves faced it! Equally glad I don't have to.

I suppose it depends on how extensive your DRP is.

Hopefully our DC has a fantastic one.

Hot swappable SCSI drives, RAID 5 and proper tape backups are the extent of our system. We have never had to rely on it for a full recovery as of yet but certainly have for clients that have accidentally deleted critical files

If you are running a truly mission critical site then you will have mirror servers running at 1 or more different physical locations.

Now stop before you keep me awake at night

Originally posted by 1GigHost
We run raid 5, and a daily tape backup. Is a bit more expensive but sure saves alot of headaches when a customer fouls on their own site.
Highly disbelievable.

Originally posted by 1GigHost
I suppose it depends on how extensive your DRP is.

Hopefully our DC has a fantastic one.

Hot swappable SCSI drives, RAID 5 and proper tape backups are the extent of our system. We have never had to rely on it for a full recovery as of yet but certainly have for clients that have accidentally deleted critical files

If you are running a truly mission critical site then you will have mirror servers running at 1 or more different physical locations.

Now stop before you keep me awake at night
No webhost is going to run daily tape backups and SCSI RAID-5 and offer $5/mo plans. Please stop with your BS and why do you have an affiliate link to your own website. Please leave WHT now. There is enough crap here already.

Originally posted by NexDog
No webhost is going to run daily tape backups and SCSI RAID-5 and offer $5/mo plans. Please stop with your BS and why do you have an affiliate link to your own website. Please leave WHT now. There is enough crap here already.

I would have to agree with you, Sir. We hope to see a 5 hour turn-around on the worst of worst-case-scenarios based on a practice run because we've yet to have the world come to an end but we're on our toes. We won't know just how fast we can recover until it happens and I hope it never does.