Requirement Analysis form in Disaster Recovery

Requirements Analysis Form

The following form is used by the company to determine the disaster recovery
requirements on an application-by-application basis when negotiating service levels
with the business units. The goal is to determine all of the application requirements
before the DR solution is deployed so that there are no surprises later. IT works
through several iterations with the customer before implementing the solution. This
has worked out well at the company. The comments embedded in this form convey
the experiences of the company.
1. Which disaster recovery (DR) classification is required for this application?
n AAA
n AA
n A
n B


2. How much data can the business afford to lose? That is, how current must the
data be after it is recovered

3. How much degradation in performance is acceptable to the business during a
disaster?

4 .When do you need DR to be in place for this application?

5. How often should IT validate the DR architecture for this application?
n Quarterly
n Semi-Annually
n Annually

6. Does this application send data to or receive data from other applications?
n Where does the data come from or go to?
n How is the data transported? (E.g., Ethernet, FDDI, Token Ring)

7. What kind of database does this application use? (E.g., Oracle, Sybase, Informix,
DB2)

8. How big is the database now? How much will it grow in the next six months?

9. How does the database update its information? (E.g., Online, Batch, Feeds)

10. If data loss occurs after a disaster, is there a way to re-enter the data into the
database via OLTP, Batch, Feeds, or other methods?

11. If network bandwidth must be allocated to support a standby database, what is
the average rate at which the archive log grows (in MBytes per hour)?

12. Which database instances must be recovered in a disaster scenario?

13. What file systems are required by the application? (Include file systems for
software products, application binaries, external feeds, and so forth)

14. How do clients access the production system? How should clients access the
system in a disaster scenario?

15. What software is required by the application? (E.g., Oracle, Syncsort, and so
forth)

16. Are there any unrecoverable database activities performed by the application
that will prevent IT from restoring the database and rolling it forward?

17. If developers normally use the machines that are designated as alternate servers
for DR, will the development environment need to be up and running during a
disaster.