Disaster Recovery

 

Virginia Commonwealth University’s  Disaster Recovery Planning program ensures the University's ability to maintain critical operations and restore essential Information Technology resources in the event of a disruptive event.  Our comprehensive strategy encompasses private, public, and hybrid cloud environments, leveraging advanced technologies and proven methodologies to minimize downtime and data loss, safeguarding our academic, research, and administrative missions.

• Comprehensive Risk Assessment & Planning
  • Regularly conducted risk assessments to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities to critical IT systems and data.
  • Development and maintenance of detailed disaster recovery plans for various scenarios, including natural disasters, cyberattacks, and system failures.
  • Business impact analysis to prioritize critical systems and data for recovery.
• Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery
  • Leveraging public cloud computing infrastructure for disaster recovery, including replication of specified systems and data to geographically diverse cloud regions.
  • Utilizing public cloud based immutable storage for data integrity.
• On-Premises Infrastructure Resilience:
  • Implementation of redundant hardware and software configurations to minimize single points of failure.
  • Regular backups and offsite storage of critical data.
  • Maintenance of a secondary data center for recovery in failover scenarios.
• Data Replication & Recovery
  • Real-time or near-real-time replication of critical data to secondary locations.
  • Automated recovery procedures for rapid restoration of systems and data.
  • Utilizing Cohesity Snapshots for rapid recovery points.
• Testing & Validation
  • Regularly scheduled disaster recovery drills and simulations to test the effectiveness of recovery plans.
  • Validation of recovery procedures and documentation to ensure accuracy and completeness.
• Communication & Notification
  • Establishment of clear communication protocols for notifying stakeholders in the event of a disaster.
  • Maintenance of up-to-date contact information for key personnel.
• Cybersecurity & Ransomware Recovery
  • Incorporation of cybersecurity best practices into disaster recovery plans, including incident response and ransomware recovery procedures.
  • Immutable backups and air-gapped recovery environments to protect against ransomware attacks.
• Benefits for VCU
  • Ensured continuity of academic and research operations in the event of a disruption.
  • Protection of sensitive student and research data from loss or corruption.
  • Minimized downtime and financial losses associated with IT outages.
  • Enhanced compliance with regulatory requirements and industry best practices.
  • Increased stakeholder confidence in the University's ability to maintain operations.

To request this service, enter "Request UCC Disaster Recovery" in RamsCentral Search field.

Formal recovery plans can be written to be reviewed by UCC staff for a fee of $1,000 for the initial year and $500 for review years. Annual reviews are performed in the March timeframe.

The Disaster Recovery onboarding/annual process will review specific requirements such as Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), and provide services such as making the network provisioning requests to enable the individual servers to operate via the University’s disaster recovery infrastructure.

Technology Services Directors will determine the priority of the recovery servers with DR plans.  There are additional recovery options beyond those groups which will require more robust recovery options.  These options necessitate custom pricing, which is dependent on specific needs.