Hello all,
Normally in a BCDR project the hard part is what applications to protect first, second, or last, and what do they need to work. Meaning to work is about what do they need - DNS, AD, databases or whatever.
Sometimes this problem doesn’t exist because a company bought a Business Impact Assessment (BIA) which details the applications and what they need, as well as what apps to protect first. BIA are done by accounting firms normally.
If you do not have an BIA nor can you get one done, an alternative is to do your own application catalog. It will contain all the application info, and then you can share it with management and have them identify the order of recovery.
It might look something like below:
Bear in mind it is very important to have management set the priority of restart. With the info we see above we can confirm what is in the recovery site, but also what we need in a test failover too. Note how Exchange needs a AD server but with the Global Catalog role?
It is also important to get right the main support person as they will be very useful when doing your first test failover and nothing works.
The help desk can really help get an Application Catalog done.
Here is a sample - Excel based - AppCatalog
Here is a sample - Word based - AppCatalog
Any questions or comments do not hesitate in reaching out!
Michael
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