There has been much talk lately about backups. Thankfully I have not had to face this too.
Since backups are on a lot of people’s minds lately, and more importantly as Joel restates it’s not really the backup that’s important, but the restore which is!
Do you have everything backed up you’ll need? Have you actually tried to restore from your backups lately?
Or how about this? Is your DR Plan actually up to date? Sure you just did a full restore of your DR Plan two months ago, but what’s changed since then? Optimally you should be updating your DR Plan whenever there are any system changes. But quite likely something was forgotten, that something won’t be pointed out till the next attempt to do a test restore or the real deal hits.
That’s why I suggest doing a review of your DR Plan monthly. I personally set a reminder for the last Monday of every month. I haven’t always been perfect in this. But I have noticed that when I do a scan through it that’s not related to a specific new update that I tend to flesh out the DR Plan more. So that after a few months not only do I have the basics in, but a lot of extra stuff that might be really helpful to standup the system should the proverbial shit hit the fan.