Disaster recovery in information technology is the ability of an infrastructure to restart operations after a disaster. While many of today's larger computer systems contain built-in programs for disaster recovery, standalone recovery programs often provide enhanced features. Disaster recovery is used both in the context of data loss prevention and data recovery.

There are two primary metrics to demonstrate recoverability following failure:

• Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the point in time that the restarted infrastructure will reflect. Essentially, this is the roll-back that will be experienced as a result of the recovery. Reducing RPO requires increasing synchronicity of data replication.

• Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the amount of time that will pass before an infrastructure is available. Reducing RTO requires data to be online and available at a failover site.

When critical data loss occurs without a preventive disaster recovery policy in place data recovery becomes the only option.

In order for an organization to effectively protect its resources from potential disaster, they should invest in implementing a Disaster Recovery Plan.

External links

• Disaster Recovery and Computer Security for small business, a easy to use resource focused on disaster recovery and computer security issues.

• Disaster Recovery World, a resource and directory dedicated to disaster recovery issues.

• Disaster Recovery Blog, large, continually updated portal with disaster recovery news and resources.