Overview

• Disaster Planning

• Backing Up Data

• Restoring Your Server and Data

The End Result

By the end of this chapter, you ll know how to develop and test your disaster plan. You ll also understand backup strategies and be able to implement a backup process that fits the needs of your company. You ll also learn about your restore options and how to use restore processes to recover from small and large failures.

Disaster Planning

We begin this chapter with disaster planning because without a solid disaster plan, backups alone will not secure your network data from loss. If you recall from our discussion earlier in the book, network security takes on many forms. All methods involved keeping data secure. So far, we ve focused on preventing unauthorized access to network resources, but physically securing data is another critical aspect of data security. Backups help if a drive on the server fails, but what would you do if the building (and server, client computers, and network cabling) burns to the ground? How will your company continue operations? What steps will you take? Who s in charge? Where will you go for expert assistance? If you don t have a solid disaster plan for your corporate network, you re making a very high-stakes gamble. We re going to discuss the elements of a good disaster plan so you can create one for your organization. It s not a difficult process, just one that requires you to think through various scenarios. The adage, Hope for the best, plan for the worst