This is one in a series of five teasers from the October issue of the Windows Administration in Realtime e-Journal. This is only a teaser. If you want to read the entire article -- and who wouldn't! -- sign up for your own free copy here.

Common Ways to Tell you are not Prepared to Recover from a Disaster
By: Eric Beehler

Disaster recovery is somewhat of a buzzword in the IT industry, and IT professionals have all been exposed to their share of great disaster recovery ideas from business managers. These ideas are often based on the industry buzz and seem to only make more work for you with little gain overall. This is usually because the idea is not backed up with a real plan. The actual implementation of disaster recovery is usually a big chore to undertake correctly, but in the end, it is well worth the trouble.

It's important to be ready to recover your data and systems when a disaster strikes, but it is rarely a top priority in the grand scheme of IT projects when crisis has yet to strike close to home. Unless your company has decided to make disaster recovery a high-level objective, it's usually the front-line administrator that will be saddled with the responsibility of implementing some sort of plan to save the day -- but you will likely be short changed on training and resources to get the job done.

There are many ways to deal with a disaster, from having a set of cold standby machines to employing a fully redundant hot data center. In reality, as the administrator, your job doesn't change much based on the scenario for recovery; it has to be up and available to keep your business running. You likely have some kind of plan now, but if you haven't been through the real thing, you really don't know if your plan will hold water. For Windows administrators, there are several problems that seem to expose themselves when it's time to exercise a disaster recovery plan, or worse yet, go through the real thing. Here are some common ways to tell that you are not ready for a disaster.

You are not ready for a disaster if you don't...

To read the rest, grab your e-Journal copy today!