What is the best practice for IT disaster recovery testing?
Answer 1: This is an excellent question. We are having a similar discussion at my company. With limited test times and resources there is strong argument for having a stable test so that all the various applications and systems can have a shot. If you have a central point of failure during the test that prevents the other applications or systems from being tested you may have lost more than you gained. The other argument is just as strong, if we don’t replicate fully a disaster environment then we are not truly testing our overall capability. We are looking at creating a testing schedule that allows us to conduct smaller isolated tests in-house for those applications that require at least one test per year. Having satisfied a regulatory requirement and giving those teams a full shot at testing their plans we can do the larger “real recovery” test to ensure that those critical single points of failure are recoverable. This may allow us to have it both ways. Since we are still in the dis
