Data Center Checklist
A well thought out data center disaster recovery plan is key to recovering quickly when a disruptive event occurs. Tech Target’s Paul Kirvan provides us with several data center checklists to follow in the aftermath of an outage. Mr. Kirvan recommends reviewing these checklists to ensure your plan is comprehensive as well using them as a starting point to develop a checklist specific to your company’s requirements.
Let’s take a look at some common data center outages and the recovery checklists that correspond:
Power Outage- Data Center Recovery Checklist
- Step 1: Determine the extent of the outage.
- Step 2: Determine if staff needs to evacuate.
- Step 3: Assess potential damage to firm, ensure critical data is backed up and protected.
- Step 4: Contact senior management.
- Step 5: Contact utility company.
- Step 6: Identify cause of outage, launch remediation efforts.
- Step 7: Assess when data center operations can resume.
- Step 8: Contact senior management, send regular updates on progress.
Server Failure – Data Center Recovery Checklist
- Step 1: Determine extent of server outage, data loss and other potential outcomes.
- Step 2: Launch remediation efforts, e.g. check power supply, attempt server restart, run diagnostics.
- Step 3: Assess potential damage to firm, ensure that critical applications and data running on server(s) is backed up and protected.
- Step 4: Identify cause of server outage, continue remediation efforts.
- Step 5: Assess when normal server operations can resume.
- Step 6: Contact senior management, send regular updates on progress.
Fire – Data Center Recovery Checklist
- Step 1: Assess nature and extent of fire.
- Step 2: Use existing fire suppression equipment to extinguish fire, e.g. sprinklers, hand-held extinguishers. Note: if fire is severe move quickly to call 911 and/or evacuate staff.
- Step 3: Dial 911, advise of situation.
- Step 4: Evacuate building staff.
- Step 5: If possible and safe activate data center backup measures to protect current data.
- Step 6: Once fire is out, begin damage assessment.
- Step 7: Update senior management on status.
