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Walkthrough

Walkthrough testing seeks to ensure that physical limitations have been effectively taken into account by requiring personnel to step through the physical acts associated with recovery. The addition of the physical considerations can identify shortcomings that might not otherwise be apparent in the discussion-only read-through or tabletop testing approaches.

Simulation Test

A simulation test goes beyond talking about the process and actually has teams to carry out the recovery process. A pretend disaster is simulated to which the team must respond as they are directed to by the DRP. The scope of simulations will vary significantly, and tend to grow to be more complicated, and involve more systems, as smaller disaster simulations are successfully managed. Though some will see the goal as being able to successfully recover the systems impacted by the simulation, ultimately the goal of any testing of a DRP is to help ensure that the organization is well prepared in the event of an actual disaster.

Parallel Processing

Another type of DRP test is parallel processing. This type of test is common in environments where transactional data is a key component of the critical business processing. Typically, this test will involve recovery of critical processing components at an alternate computing facility, and then restore data from a previous backup. Note that regular production systems are not interrupted.

The transactions from the day after the backup are then run against the newly restored data, and the same results achieved during normal operations for the date in question should be mirrored by the recovery system’s results. Organizations that are highly dependent upon mainframe and midrange systems will often employ this type of test.

Partial and Complete Business Interruption

Arguably, the highest fidelity of all DRP tests involves business interruption testing. However, this type of test can actually be the cause of a disaster, so extreme caution should be exercised before attempting an actual interruption test. As the name implies, the business interruption style of testing will have the organization actually stop processing normal business at the primary location, and will instead leverage the alternate computing facility. These types of tests are more common in organizations where fully redundant, often load-balanced, operations already exist.

Note

Each DRP testing method varies in complexity and cost, and simpler tests are less expensive. Here is how the plans are ranked in order of cost and complexity, from low to high:

  • DRP Review
  • Read-Through/Checklist/Consistency/Tabletop
  • Structured Walkthrough
  • Simulation Test
  • Parallel Processing
  • Partial Interruption
  • Complete Business Interruption