Data Center Disaster Recovery refers to the organizational planning meant to help companies resume business as usual following unexpected events that may result in loss of data and/or damage to software and hardware systems.

Most organizations invest in some manner of data protection as part of their data center disaster recovery plan, perhaps using a data backup service so that mission-critical data may be restored if needed. Large companies often allocate significant budget dollars to data center disaster recovery plans since the alternative could mean potentially crippling losses in productivity, revenue and reputation after a disaster.

Creating an effective data center disaster recovery strategy may involve the following:

• A thorough assessment of the costs associated with loss of critical systems
• Pinpointing the maximum downtime window following an operational outage
• Finding ways to minimize the volume of data that could be permanently lost between a given backup point and a disaster event
• Minimizing business disruption and while providing maximum fault tolerance for all computer-related business functions

Thanks to increasingly affordable off-site remote data backup services, data center disaster recovery services that were formerly available only to enterprise IT departments are now within reach of small and medium-sized businesses.