There is one simple question to ask yourself to determine whether you need a disaster recovery plan: "Can my business continue to function without my CICS® system?" An unqualified, "Yes, my business can continue to function without my CICS system and the data it accesses" is the only answer that indicates that you do not need a disaster recovery plan. To build a disaster recovery plan you need to take into account a number of items unique to disaster recovery. They include:
You may consider some, or all, of your CICS applications as vital to the operations of your business. If all applications are vital, you need to recover all the data that your CICS systems use. If only some of your applications are vital, you have to determine what data is associated with those applications.
The length of time between the disaster and recovery of your vital applications is a key factor. If your business cannot continue without access to your CICS data, your disaster recovery plan must take this into account.
The time-sensitive nature of your recovered data can be an overriding factor. If your vital application is a high volume, high change application, recovering week-old data may not be acceptable--even hour-old data may be unacceptable. You may need to recover right up to the point of the disaster.
The type of disaster from which you plan to recover can determine where your disaster recovery site is located. If you foresee only fire and water damage to your computer floor, a disaster recovery site in the building next door may be acceptable. If you are located in an area prone to hurricanes or earthquakes, for example, a disaster recovery site next door would be pointless.
When you are planning for disaster recovery, consider the cost of being unable to operate your business for a period of time. You have to consider the number of lost transactions, and the future loss of business as your customers go elsewhere. Your disaster recovery solution should not be more expensive than the loss from the disaster, unless your business would fail as a result of the outage caused by a disaster.
What is the real cost of your disaster recovery plan? Keeping track of the total cost of your disaster recovery procedures allows you to look at available options and judge the benefits and cost of each.
Your disaster recovery plan should include some performance considerations once you have recovered. Unless your disaster site mirrors your production site, you should determine acceptable levels of throughput and transaction times while operating from the disaster recovery site. The length of time it takes to recover your primary site can also determine what your disaster recovery site has to support in the interim.
In summary, be aware that risk, speed of recovery, and completeness of recovery have to be balanced against cost.
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