Working with Windows® Small Business Server 2011 Essentials by Charlie Russel & Sharon Crawford & Andrew Edney

Author:Charlie Russel & Sharon Crawford & Andrew Edney [Charlie Russel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: COMPUTERS / Operating Systems / Windows Server & NT
ISBN: 9780735656635
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Published: 2011-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

Planning for Disaster

Some people seem to operate on the assumption that if they don’t think about bad things, they won’t happen. Unfortunately, life is not so easy. No business owner wants a disaster, but if you have one, you really don’t want to start trying to build your recovery plan on the spot. Disaster recovery plans aren’t exciting and sexy. But having a clear disaster recovery plan that has been thoroughly tested goes a long, long way toward providing assurance that your business will be one that survives.

There is no such thing as a final version of your disaster plan. The moment you finish creating the current version of it, it is time to start on the next version. A good disaster plan is one that you are constantly examining, improving, updating, and testing. Even the best disaster recovery plan needs to be constantly examined and adjusted or it quickly gets out of date.

Real World: Size Does Matter

Disasters happen to businesses of all sizes and types. Small businesses are no more insulated from them than large businesses are, but generally they don’t have the same levels of resources to respond to them and recover from them. A large, multinational corporation with an IT staff of several hundred people worldwide certainly has more resources than a small accounting firm with an IT staff of one. As you work through the steps to build your disaster recovery plan, your decisions for planning and implementing it will vary depending on the size of your company and the resources available.

In the discussion of disaster planning that follows, many of the steps and the actions associated with those steps are quite formal and probably sound like a bit more than you can manage in your small business. And, in many cases, you’re right—in a small business, one can often be substantially more informal. But do not make the mistake of ignoring something because it sounds too formal or involved. Rather, adjust the step and actions to fit within your smaller, but no less important, business. No matter how small your business is, if it uses and depends on Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, you have valuable and business-critical assets on your server, so take the steps to protect them and your business before you have a disaster. You’ll save money, time, and, most important, business reputation by being able to withstand and even grow in the face of disaster.

We’ve been through fires, earthquakes, crashed servers, and just plain egregious error, and we’ve learned the hard way that disaster recovery is something you can do a lot better if you’ve planned for it ahead of time. It’s not sexy, and it’s sometimes hard to sell to upper management, but it is worth the effort. If you’re lucky, you’ll never need to use all of your plans for worst-case scenarios, but if you do need them, you’ll be really, really glad you have them.

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