Checklist created for Windstream illustrating how to recover from a disaster without creating another using Disaster Recovery as a Service.

1. RECOVERING FROM DISASTER—WITHOUT CREATING ANOTHER
PLANNING
Do you have a formal written Disaster Recovery plan?
Nearly 3 in 4 global companies surveyed are at risk, failing to prepare for
Disaster Recovery.1
60% of global companies surveyed do not have a fully documented DR plan and
another 40% admitted that the DR plan they currently have did not prove very useful
when it was called on to respond to their worst Disaster Recovery event or scenario.1
1 Disaster Recovery Preparedness Benchmark Survey: The State of Global Disaster Recovery Preparedness

2. RECOVERING FROM DISASTER—WITHOUT CREATING ANOTHER
TESTING
Have you tested the plan?
Research has found that ‘self-hosters’ test their organization’s DR capabilities
an average of once every six months; DRaaS users say they are able to
conduct their recovery tests monthly.2
Many organizations today still struggle with assembling the skills, time or money
to adequately plan and test their DR preparedness.
cc 21% do not have the skill sets to effectively perform DR tests
cc 36% do not have the time to test their DR plans
cc 18% say DR is too expensive to test3
2 ESG Research, “Virtualization + Cloud = BC/DR”
3 Disaster Recovery Preparedness Benchmark Survey: The State of Global Disaster Recovery Preparedness

3. RECOVERING FROM DISASTER—WITHOUT CREATING ANOTHER
COMPREHENSIVENESS
Are all of your critical data, servers and applications
part of the plan?
More than one-third (36%) of global companies surveyed lost
one or more critical applications, VMs, or critical data files for hours
at a time over the past year.4
Nearly one in five companies have lost one or more critical applications
over a period of days.4
One in four respondents said that they had lost most or all
of a datacenter for hours or even days.4
4 Disaster Recovery Preparedness Benchmark Survey: The State of Global Disaster Recovery Preparedness

4. RECOVERING FROM DISASTER—WITHOUT CREATING ANOTHER
RTOs
Is there a clear Recovery Time Objective
for each business requirement?
76% of survey participants said that they must be operational
after a disaster within 24 hours.5
74% of respondents could tolerate up to three hours of downtime
before they start suffering revenue loss.6
54% of those surveyed could not tolerate even an hour of downtime.6
5 Gartner BCM Survey: January 2015
6 CIOZone, “Reducing the Cost of Disaster Recovery”

5. RECOVERING FROM DISASTER—WITHOUT CREATING ANOTHER
ASSETS
Can you protect physical severs?
“The consequences of a physical security breach in a server room or similar IT facility can
be catastrophic, with damage caused to high value equipment, operational capability and a
company’s reputation – not to mention its balance sheet.”
– FMWorld, “The Importance of Physical Security”
“Data centers need redundant utilities so if one system fails, there is a backup. This includes
water, power, telephone lines and air filtration systems. Battery backups also are essential to
ensure security systems; heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC); and other essential
systems continue to operate in case of an area-wide power outage. Today most companies
also have redundant Internet access to different physical infrastructures and providers.”
– Stephen Lawton, “A Guide to Physical Data Center Security Solutions”

6. RECOVERING FROM DISASTER—WITHOUT CREATING ANOTHER
FLEXIBILITY
Can you customize a solution that fits your unique business needs?
“Disaster recovery (DR) causes plenty of headaches; DR systems are expensive,
hard to configure, difficult to test and quickly outdated.
“Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), a cloud-based method, costs less,
is easier to deploy, provides the ability to test plans regularly and keeps pace
with corporate changes.”7
Depending on customer requirements, if not all data requires backup,
an organization can reduce costs with flexibility protection.8
7 TechTarget, “Disaster Recovery as a Service Wipes Out Traditional DR Plans”
8 Techopedia, “Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)”

7. RECOVERING FROM DISASTER—WITHOUT CREATING ANOTHER
PLANNING
Do you have a formal written Disaster Recovery plan?
Nearly 3 in 4 global companies surveyed are at risk, failing to prepare for
Disaster Recovery.1
60% of global companies surveyed do not have a fully documented DR plan and
another 40% admitted that the DR plan they currently have did not prove very useful
when it was called on to respond to their worst disaster recovery event or scenario.1
1 Disaster Recovery Preparedness Benchmark Survey: The State of Global Disaster Recovery Preparedness

8. RECOVERING FROM DISASTER—WITHOUT CREATING ANOTHER
PLANNING
Do you have a formal written Disaster Recovery plan?
Nearly 3 in 4 global companies surveyed are at risk, failing to prepare for
Disaster Recovery.1
60% of global companies surveyed do not have a fully documented DR plan and
another 40% admitted that the DR plan they currently have did not prove very useful
when it was called on to respond to their worst disaster recovery event or scenario.1
1 Disaster Recovery Preparedness Benchmark Survey: The State of Global Disaster Recovery Preparedness