In part 1 of "DR a simulated disaster # 1", I blogged about a simulated DR with reduced staff. That was a stressful day. Recovering from the one day DR was also a monumental task in itself. Having a DR plan and practicing it is one thing, but reverting back to your production system after a DR is another type of plan, often overlooked. Luckily no code changes had been made, but what about the data.

Production needed to be resynched from DR. Some of this could be done by automated methods, but some systems had to have the data re-entered manually, not ideal.

The whole event was a real eye opener to not just IT, but the business as well, about how hard a good DR and reinstatement plan is and how it constantly needed to be reviewed, updated and if possible tested (even in isolation). What plans do you have to reinstate your systems after a DR? Could you also do that with a skeleton staff?