Your client’s backups exist. Whether their recovery works is a different question, and it is the one an auditor or cyber insurer will ask. For the person who owns uptime, a failed disaster recovery test is a career event, and the call lands on you.
What the test actually asks
A backup job that finishes is evidence that data was copied. It is not evidence that a client can be running again in the time the business can tolerate. Insurers see the difference. They expect documented proof that restores work and meet recovery objectives, through real restore tests rather than simulations. Testing quarterly is a sound baseline, and monthly is better for critical workloads.
Three terms decide how a test is judged:
- RTO (recovery time objective): how long the business can be down.
- RPO (recovery point objective): how much recent data the business can afford to lose.
- The runbook: who does what, in what order, and where the copy is restored to.
Most clients have never written these down for each workload, which is why the first test is often the first time anyone finds out.
The gap for many MSPs
Building a recovery site for a handful of clients rarely makes economic sense. So the recovery plan stays on paper, and the test never happens. You can close that gap without building anything.
What ThinkOn provides
ThinkOn provides the recovery platform while you keep running the service: DRaaS, Zerto, Veeam and Commvault, immutable storage through our Hardened Repository, and flexible RTO and RPO so you can match recovery to what each client’s workloads need. You keep the client relationship. We provide the platform your recovery test runs on.
A short readiness check
For each client, can you answer these?
- When did this client last prove a full recovery, and where is the record?
- Are RTO and RPO written down for each critical workload?
- Is there a copy the recovery can start from that ransomware could not have touched?
- Who runs the test, and who signs off on the result?
A client with a blank on any line has a recovery plan that is a guess.
Let’s talk
We’re heading to IT Nation Connect Global, November 4–6 in Orlando. Stop by Booth 545 and we’ll walk through how a recovery test runs on our platform. If you can’t make it, contact us and we’ll set up a call.
