For all that goes into the processes surrounding disaster recovery, it's hoped that it will never be necessary. The complexity of a disaster recovery program rises and falls with the size, locale, diversity, and application of the systems involved. Smaller system environments can protect themselves against a disaster merely by regularly taking a backup of their systems. Larger data center environments that support distributed systems, large networks, virtualization, and perhaps a cloud service, have a much more complicated task in identifying the required elements of continuity and their sequence for recovery—not to mention, exactly how soon and where the recovery is to happen. A medium-sized operation falls somewhere in between these two extremes.
In this chapter, we will review the definitions, methods, products, and applications involved in disaster...