As an experiment, the next time you are in your data center, look around you and imagine for a moment that there is nothing there. And not just the servers. Imagine that the entire building no longer exists. Then imagine that your job is to recover as much information as possible from the data center, as soon as possible. What would you do?

Thinking from this perspective, you are giving your first step towards disaster recovery. Disaster recovery is the ability to recover, as quickly and completely as possible, from an event affecting the operations of the data center of your organization. The type of disaster may vary, but the ultimate goal is always the same.

The steps in disaster recovery are numerous and vary according to the role and objectives of the organization.

Below, we give some basic and general guidelines for disaster recovery:

1. Creating a disaster recovery plan: We must conduct a study and an implementation of a disaster recovery plan.
   1. A backup site; this is vital in any disaster recovery plan.
   2. Events classified as a disaster.
   3. Staff in charge of putting the plan into action.
   4. Steps to follow to put the backup site in motion.
   5. Roles of the staff in the event of a disaster.
   6. Inventory of hardware and software necessary to restore the operation of the systems.
   7. Steps to move the operations to the backup site.
2. Backup Sites: One of the most important aspects of disaster recovery plans is to have a location from which this can be executed. This location is known as the backup site. In case of a disaster, the backup site is where you restore your data center and from where you operate during the recovery.
   1. Cold backup site, it is just a space in a building configured properly. All that is needed to restore the service for your customers, must be obtained and submitted to this site before beginning the recovery process. As you can imagine, the delay of going from a cold room to a full room in operation can be substantial. These are the least expensive, but more time-consuming and difficult to implement.
   2. Warm backup site: A warm site is already equipped with the hardware that makes a faithful representation of what was found in your data center. To restore service, you must send the last backups from your storage facility off-site and complete a restoration before it can begin the real work of recovery.
   3. Hot backup site: Hot backup sites have a virtual mirror image of your data center with all the systems configured and only waiting for the last backups of your users´ data from the off-site storage. As you can imagine, a hot backup site can be operated completely within a few hours. A hot backup site includes the most expensive approach to disaster recovery, but is the fastest and most efficient one.
3. Hardware and software availability: Your disaster recovery plan must include methods to obtain the hardware and software necessary to start operations at the backup site.
4. Availability of backups: The most recent backups of your organization should be available. They must be out of your organization and in an available place at the time of a disaster.
5. Network connectivity in the backup site: A data center is not very helpful if you are offline. In these cases, good connectivity is vital to restoring production and gain access to your data.
6. Qualified personnel in the data center: The backup data center must have the qualified personnel necessary for its operation. This will give you peace of mind during the time of a disaster, your data and your operations will be in the hands of experts.
7. Back to normal: all disasters have a beginning and an end. The disaster recovery plan must take this phase into account. The new data center should be equipped with all the software and hardware needed to return to a normal operation. The latest backups should be delivered to the new data center and put into production. Finally, an analysis of the effectiveness of your plan is performed, incorporating any recommended changes.