Backups and Disaster Recovery Checklist

To recap, here are the important important things to consider when planning your backup and disaster recovery strategies:

Select a backup strategy appropriate to the criticality of the data in your directory and your directory server software.
Consider using replication as your primary means of protecting against catastrophic equipment failures.
Even if replication is used to provide backup, traditional procedures such as backing up directory data to magnetic tape are still needed to protect against erroneous data update procedures that destroy directory data.
It is critical to safeguard your backups from damage and to ensure the security of the data they contain.
Verify backups to ensure that the data they contain is valid and can be successfully restored.
Develop a disaster plan appropriate to your business needs and the types of disasters you may encounter.
Disaster recovery services can be provided in-house or purchased from a disaster recovery vendor (sometimes also called a business continuity service). In either case, costs of a disaster recovery plan are directly related to the speed with which services can be restored.