When a fire alarm goes off at a school, nobody stops to figure out what to do next. Students know where to go. Teachers know their responsibilities. Everyone has practiced the process before an actual emergency occurs.
Your backup and disaster recovery strategy should work the same way.
Having backups is important, but a backup alone doesn’t tell you whether your business can recover from an outage, ransomware attack, hardware failure or accidental data loss. The only way to know is to test the recovery process before you need it.
Having a Backup Is Not the Same as Being Able to Recover
A successful backup confirms that data was copied. It does not necessarily confirm that your critical systems can be restored within the timeframe your business requires.
That distinction matters.
If a server fails tomorrow, your IT team needs to know more than whether a backup exists. They need answers to questions such as:
- Is the backup recoverable?
- How quickly can the affected system be restored?
- Which applications and systems need to be recovered first?
- Are there dependencies between those systems?
- Can employees continue working while recovery is underway?
- How much data could be lost between the last usable recovery point and the outage?
These questions are at the heart of Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). Your RTO defines how quickly a system needs to be restored, while your RPO determines how much data loss the business can tolerate.
A recovery test determines whether your actual backup and disaster recovery environment can meet those objectives.
What Should a Backup Recovery Test Include?
Recovery testing should go beyond confirming that a backup job completed successfully.
Depending on your environment, testing may include restoring files, applications, servers or virtual machines from backup and verifying that the recovered systems function correctly.
A meaningful test should evaluate:
1. Backup integrity
Can the selected recovery point actually be restored?
A backup showing a “successful” status isn’t particularly useful if the data is corrupted, incomplete or otherwise unusable when you attempt a recovery.
2. Recovery speed
How long does it take to restore a critical workload?
If your business requires a four-hour RTO but restoring the system takes 12 hours, there is a gap between your business continuity requirements and your current recovery capabilities.
3. Recovery order
Not every system has the same priority.
Your organization should identify its most critical systems and understand the dependencies between them. For example, restoring an application may accomplish very little if the database, authentication service or network resources it depends on are still unavailable.
This prioritization should be documented as part of your business continuity plan.
4. System functionality
A successful restore doesn’t necessarily mean the recovery is complete.
Recovered systems should be checked to confirm that applications launch, users can authenticate, databases are accessible and critical business processes actually work.
5. Recovery procedures
Testing also evaluates the people and processes involved.
Who initiates the recovery? Who decides which systems receive priority? Who communicates with employees, customers and vendors? Who has the credentials and permissions required to perform the restore?
These details are much easier to resolve during a planned test than during an active outage.
Why Recovery Testing Matters
The cost of an outage isn’t limited to the IT department.
When critical systems are unavailable, employees may be unable to access customer records, process orders, communicate internally or complete transactions. Manufacturing operations can stop. Customer service teams can lose access to account information. Financial systems and other essential applications may become unavailable.
The longer recovery takes, the greater the potential operational and financial impact.
This is why NIST contingency planning guidance recommends testing contingency plans to identify deficiencies and determine whether recovery procedures work as intended.
Testing also provides information businesses can use to improve their recovery strategy. If a test shows that a critical server takes eight hours to recover when the business requires a two-hour RTO, you can address that problem before an actual outage.
How Often Should You Test Disaster Recovery?
There isn’t one testing schedule that’s appropriate for every organization.
Testing frequency should reflect the importance of your systems, the amount of change in your environment and your organization’s risk and compliance requirements.
At minimum, recovery procedures should also be reviewed or tested after significant changes such as:
- Infrastructure upgrades or migrations
- New critical applications
- Major configuration changes
- Changes to backup platforms or policies
- Changes in key personnel or recovery responsibilities
Organizations with extremely low downtime tolerances or regulatory requirements may need more frequent or comprehensive testing.
The goal isn’t simply to say that a disaster recovery test was completed. It’s to demonstrate that the organization can recover its critical operations within its required recovery objectives.
Backup Testing vs. Disaster Recovery Testing
It’s also important to distinguish between testing an individual backup and testing the broader disaster recovery process.
Restoring a file proves that the file can be recovered.
Restoring a server proves more.
Testing whether your organization can recover multiple interconnected systems in the correct sequence, within its required RTOs and RPOs, provides a much better picture of whether the business can withstand a serious disruption.
For organizations that cannot tolerate extended downtime, a business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solution can provide capabilities beyond traditional backup, including rapid virtualization and recovery options designed to keep critical workloads available during an outage.
Don’t Wait for an Outage to Test Your Recovery Plan
The middle of an outage is the worst time to discover that a backup won’t restore, a recovery process takes longer than expected or nobody knows which system should come back online first.
That’s why recovery testing is the business equivalent of a fire drill.
You aren’t predicting an emergency. You’re verifying that the systems, technology and people responsible for recovery can execute the plan when an emergency occurs.
How Confident Are You in Your Recovery?
Invenio IT helps businesses evaluate, test and strengthen their backup and disaster recovery strategies. With more than 25 years of data protection experience, we help organizations identify recovery gaps and implement BCDR solutions designed around their actual recovery requirements.
Not sure whether your current backup strategy can meet your recovery objectives? Schedule a Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Consultation. Or call (888) 244-1912 to speak with an Invenio IT data protection specialist.
