Disaster recovery, or DR, picks up where backups and simple failovers leave off. DR ensures that neither an organization’s data nor its services can be wiped out at one fell swoop. Put another way, DR not only protects data and applications, but protects users’ ability to access those data and applications. This access is what allows users to continue doing their jobs in the event of a catastrophe.

There’s more than one way to go about pursuing a DR solution. In many cases, organizations create an alternative datacenter at a great physical distance from their primary one. This alternative datacenter, or DR facility, can support critical functions if the primary datacenter goes down. It can’t make disasters painless, but it can make them survivable.

We’ve been in the disaster-recovery business a long time. We help our clients choose the right locations and hosts for their DR facilities. We make sure our clients’ DR facilities have enough capacity to support critical functions but not so much capacity that they go over budget. We document step-by-step instructions for virtually migrating applications and services (Microsoft Exchange, for instance) from the primary site to the DR site.