Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) for [PRODUCT]

A SQL Server disaster is an event that causes data loss or any serious SQL Server disruption. Causes of a disaster can be numerous: power failure, hardware failure, virus attack, natural disaster, human error, etc. Some SQL Server disasters cannot be prevented. That’s why a good disaster recovery plan is important .

A good SQL Server disaster recovery plan must take into account numerous factors: sensitivity of data, data loss tolerance, required availability, etc. The plan can be based on few a solutions: Failover clustering Database mirroring Replication Log shipping Backup and restore .

Failover clustering is a concept where a SQL Server instance is installed on the shared storage

Database mirroring is a solution for increasing availability of a SQL Server database.

Replication can be used as a technology for coping and distributing data from one SQL Server database to another. Consistency is achieved by synchronizing.

Log shipping is based on automated sending of transaction log backups from a primary SQL Server instance to one or more secondary SQL Server instances.

To help with that process, I’ve created a Microsoft Word document template for disaster recovery planning. It’s somewhat centered around SharePoint as a technology but you can easily customize it to fit your needs. The recommendations in the template are based on how Microsoft IT does disaster recovery. One basic assumption I’d like to point out though: the template assumes that you have some kind of secondary data center as a core component of your disaster recovery strategy.