Backup, Recovery & Disaster Recovery
Designing, implementing and testing a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery solution to protect critical systems against ransomware, hardware failure and site-wide disasters.
The Challenge
A client recognised that their business was increasingly vulnerable to ransomware and operational disruption. They lacked a fully qualified Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) solution capable of keeping the organisation operational during a major incident.
The challenge extended beyond protecting individual files. The organisation needed confidence that its servers, applications, databases and essential business services could be recovered even if its primary infrastructure or entire site became unavailable.
The critical question
What happens if the entire site is lost through fire, flooding, ransomware or another major incident?
That question fundamentally changed the recovery strategy. A backup stored at the same location as the systems it protects cannot, on its own, provide adequate resilience against a site-wide disaster.
Discovery & Business Impact Assessment
I worked closely with the client to understand their operational requirements and identify which systems were essential to business continuity.
Identifying business-critical systems
Reviewed the organisation’s servers, databases, applications and file storage to establish which workloads required the greatest level of protection.
Reviewing retention and archiving
Worked with the client to distinguish operational data from information suitable for longer-term archiving, helping shape an appropriate backup strategy.
Understanding acceptable data loss
Discussed how frequently different systems changed and how much work the business could tolerate losing after an incident.
Planning beyond hardware failure
Considered ransomware, server failure and complete loss of the primary site, leading to a solution incorporating both local and cloud recovery capabilities.
The Recommended Solution
Following the assessment, I recommended a Datto SIRIS Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery appliance, providing a combination of local backup, virtualisation-based recovery and off-site cloud protection.
I worked with Datto to ensure the solution could recover the client’s protected physical servers as virtual machines when the original hardware was unavailable.
Two layers of recovery
Local recovery: Protected systems could be started as virtual machines on the recovery appliance, providing a route to restoring business services without waiting for replacement physical hardware.
Cloud disaster recovery: Off-site backups provided an additional recovery option if the primary location and local recovery infrastructure were unavailable.
A Backup Schedule Built Around the Business
Rather than applying a single backup frequency to every server, I designed a schedule based on each system’s role, rate of change and business importance.
| Protected System | Backup Frequency | Business Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Domain Controller | Every 24 hours | Relatively low daily change rate, with recovery coverage for core directory services. |
| Database Server | Every 2 hours | Frequent recovery points designed to limit potential production data loss. |
| Application Server | Every 24 hours | Daily protection aligned with the comparatively low rate of system changes. |
| File Server | Every hour | Hourly recovery points to support rapid restoration of deleted, corrupted or encrypted files. |
Backups were also replicated to the Datto cloud, providing an off-site recovery layer with ransomware-resistant, immutable backup protection.
Backup frequency establishes the available recovery points; actual data loss and recovery time depend on backup completion, application consistency and the incident itself.
Implementation & Recovery Testing
Installation was only the beginning. The most important part of the project was proving that the protected environment could be restored and operated successfully.
Appliance Installation & Network Configuration
Attended the client’s data centre, installed the Datto SIRIS appliance and configured its network connectivity to communicate with the protected servers.
Server Protection & Initial Backups
Deployed the Datto backup agents to the physical servers, established communication with the appliance and completed initial backups of the protected workloads.
Also explained how agentless hypervisor-level backup could be considered if the client subsequently migrated to a virtualised infrastructure.
Isolated Virtualisation Testing
Started each protected server as a virtual machine in an isolated environment without production network connectivity. This allowed boot behaviour and service availability to be checked without risking conflicts with the live systems.
Off-Site Backup Verification
Allowed the initial cloud replication process to complete over the weekend and verified that the protected backups had been transferred off-site.
Full Local Disaster Recovery Exercise
Conducted a controlled recovery test by shutting down the physical servers and starting the recovered virtual machines with network connectivity.
Validated the client’s CRM platform, business applications and supporting services to confirm that the recovered environment was operational.
Cloud Disaster Recovery Exercise
Worked with Datto and the client to reproduce the required network environment in the cloud and establish a VPN connection between the cloud recovery environment and the client’s network.
Recovered the protected servers in the cloud, verified communication between systems and successfully tested access to the CRM, applications and business files.
Ongoing Assurance
Following successful implementation and recovery testing, I explained the importance of continued monitoring, routine backup checks and periodic disaster recovery exercises.
The client was provided with a clear understanding of how backup health and recovery readiness would be reviewed and reported, helping ensure that the solution remained effective as their infrastructure evolved.
The Outcome: Recovery Proven, Not Assumed
The project delivered a comprehensive BCDR solution, backed by practical evidence that the organisation’s critical systems could be recovered both locally and in the cloud.
- Business-critical servers protected by tailored backup schedules.
- Local virtualisation recovery successfully demonstrated.
- Cloud-based disaster recovery successfully tested.
- CRM, applications and file access validated during recovery exercises.
- Off-site protection established against site-wide disasters and ransomware-related risks.
- A foundation established for ongoing backup verification and periodic DR testing.
Could Your Business Recover from a Disaster?
Whether you’re concerned about ransomware, server failure or losing access to your premises, I can help assess your existing backup arrangements and design a recovery strategy that protects your critical systems.
