Disaster recovery is a key process in running a successful business. Failure to have an adequate disaster recovery plan in place can do impact a business in many ways. Disasters can cost you money, information, customers and in the worst cases it can cost you your business. How you prepare your DR plan depends on several things and every company implements differing levels of disaster recovery planning. Hopefully your DR plan takes into consideration several different disaster scenarios and each has different tasks associated with getting things back up and running in a timely manner.
One thing that we need to take into consideration is that disasters don't always come in "disastrous" ways. Disasters can strike in ways that you don't expect. Some of the ways that a disaster can sneak up on you are things such as not paying attention to when contracts expire is one thing that can bite you if your not careful. If you have a service contract and it expires the consequences can be disastrous. Also lack of planning can be a disaster for you. If for example you are planning on moving your web server hosting in house and you don't adequately plan you may have a disaster on your hands. You may find yourself down to the last hour and not be able to make the transition in a timely and secure manner.
We tend to think of disasters being events beyond our control but sometimes events within our control can have the same effect as a real disaster. Having plans in place for ALL scenarios is a good idea.
