Office of the Chief Information Officer

United States Department of Agriculture

Disaster Recovery

An image of a turbulant sky and a funnel cloud. Text reads: NITC can provide Disaster Recovery planning and coordination services.

Service Description

NITC can provide assistance to customers with their Disaster Recovery (DR) planning, coordination, and incident response based on the Customer’s Business Impact Analysis (BIA), Recover Point Objectives (RPO), Recovery Time Objectives (RTO), and overall recovery priority.

What is Included

  • Facilitation, planning, and coordination with NITC and Customer technical staff and coordinators to:
    • Assist with customer application Business Impact Analysis
    • Co-develop customer application Disaster Recovery Plans and recovery procedures
    • Participate in table-top Disaster Recovery Exercises
    • Participate in functional Disaster Recovery Exercises
    • Assist with documenting customer Test, Training, and Exercise (TT&E) programs and After Action Reports

How We Charge

Charges are based on actual numbers of professional services hours.

Price Drivers:

  • Frequency and complexity of DR planning
  • Frequency and complexity of DR testing

Service Level Metrics

Possible Disaster Recovery Options

Service/Option RTO RPO*
Database Replication 2 hours 2 hours
Disk Replication 4 hours 2 hours
Tape Replication 24 hours 24 hours
Offsite Tape Rotation 72 hours 72 hours

* - Actual RPO is dependent on critical component availability for the timely replication of data.

Cost Saving Tips

  • Purge or archive unused data
  • Perform a Business Impact Analysis to determine application RTO and RPO requirements
  • Ensure the appropriate data protection solution is utilized to meet actual RTO and RPO requirements.

Additional Information

Typical Recovery Options and Relative Costs

Technology Recovery Scenario Recovery Time Potential Data Loss Cost
Redundancy / Clustering Hardware Failure Very fast None $$$$$
Remote Replication
  • Hardware Failure
  • Disaster
 Very fast, but application dependent Minimal $$$$
Continuous Data Protection
  • Hardware Failure
  • Application Corruption
  • User Error
 Fast but depends on the error Minimal / None $$$
Point-in-Time Copy
  • Hardware Failure
  • Application Corruption
  • User Error
 Fast but depends on the error Data after PIT copy is made may not be recovered. Recovery is not guaranteed $$
Backup
- Disk
- Tape
  • Hardware Failure
  • Disaster
  • Application Corruption
  • User Error
 Bit faster


Slow		 Data after backup may not be recovered $$


$

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