On-Premises Disaster Recovery | Communifire Documentation

Developing a comprehensive Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is essential to maintain the resilience and continuity of your intranet services. This plan, tailored to your organization's unique needs and operational methods, should be a key component of your overall risk management strategy.

Here's a guide to creating an effective DR plan:

1. Risk and Impact Analysis: Identify threats like hardware failures, natural disasters, cyberattacks, or power outages. Assess how these could impact your intranet operations.
2. Regular Data Backups: Implement a routine for daily backups of all site files and SQL databases. This reduces the risk of significant data loss.
3. Backup Retention Policy: Keep a 30-day backup history. This allows you to restore your system to a state before any disruptions, which is crucial if issues are noticed later.
4. Restoration SOP: Develop a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for restoring your site using backups on new servers. This SOP should clearly outline the steps for a quick and secure recovery, such as selecting the most recent reliable backup, setting up new servers, and minimizing downtime.
5. Communication Plan: Create a plan to inform users during a data recovery process. This includes notifying them of any recent data loss (since the last backup) and what to expect during service restoration.
6. Regular Updates and Reviews: Continuously update and review your DR plan to integrate new technologies, adapt to business changes, and apply lessons from past recovery experiences and incidents.

Following these steps will help reduce the risks of data loss and service interruptions, ensuring your organization's intranet remains a dependable and effective communication and collaboration tool.