DR planning can consist of
- data backups
- failover and failback processes
- high availability protocols
- data protection
- data loss avoidance solutions
In today’s volatile global marketplace, these are vital.
Disaster recovery plans include provisions for the protection of IT and network data, as well as the steps needed to ensure business resumes as quickly as possible. Organizations often choose secure, off-site data center locations and/or the cloud to store data and data backups as part of a DR strategy.
Quest can help you with essential business continuity consulting, evaluating your current DR setup, developing a detailed disaster recovery solution from scratch, and providing comprehensive DR testing and defined solutions.
If you need assistance building a BCP, Quest can help.
We’ll determine the scope and breadth of your BCP and identify primary business areas and connected dependencies. Our expert Business Continuity team will analyze your business-critical functions and evaluate your current infrastructure and business procedures. We’ll work with you to calculate acceptable downtime and develop a strategic BCP that meets your company’s specific needs.
Data centers and co-location facilities can be used to get your data off the premises to a secondary site that houses IT equipment, stores data, and provides supplemental IT staffing expertise. Many organizations use data centers and co-location services as a cost-effective alternative to building and maintaining their own data centers.
With co-location, your company can house your servers and networking equipment in a third-party data center that offers customized cabinet and cage solutions, temperature control, and a highly redundant and resilient power supply. Co-location data centers can also provide contracted IT experts to monitor and troubleshoot issues.
Data centers and co-location facilities often house the backups of an organization’s critical data and can be used during and after a crisis to ensure business continuity and resumption. Some data centers and co-location facilities are designed as service delivery centers and high-availability business centers for use as a temporary workspace during and after a disaster.
Quest offers flexible, customizable space for your data, equipment, and staff. Through our global network of leading-edge Service Delivery Centers (SDCs), Quest provides efficient, reliable, 24/7 power for your data and systems, as well as secure, temperature-controlled spaces in which they can reside.
Two of Quest’s California sites, our High Availability Business Center (HABC) and Business Resumption Center (BRC), can yield security and high availability when you need it most. Both sites are SSAE 18; SOC 1, 2, & 3 compliant and situated in one of the most seismically stable and secure areas, located well above the floodplain, clear of any mudslides or forest fires, and far enough inland from extreme weather.
The HABC and BRC’s open floor plans can be configured for private office space up to fully appointed command and control centers. The buildings are monitored 24/7 and feature robust infrastructure and network equipment. Your company can choose to use the HABC or BRC to establish a permanent onsite presence, as office space, or as a location for post-disaster business resumption activity.
Besides these California sites, Quest also has a network of co-location data centers across North America and beyond. Each of these is well-equipped to house your data and systems, and help you recover from disasters as well.
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is a cost-effective alternative to building and maintaining off-site infrastructure for disaster recovery. The best DRaaS solutions allow you to achieve RTO/RPO of less than 15 minutes—regardless of the storage, applications, or operating systems you use—and will offer this for either VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V environments.
DRaaS provides fast, secure, cloud-based disaster recovery in times of disruption or disaster. Your data is kept safe and secure in the cloud using advanced, image-based VM replication and a virtual cloud host for disaster recovery with CPU, RAM, storage, and networking resource allocation.
“They went truly above and beyond. I was astonished at the resources made available to us — it was phenomenal. More importantly, we now regard DR as a core component of everything we do.”
– Assistant VP of IT Operations, Regional Bank
- Start or enhance your strategy and emergency procedures
- Form nimble recovery teams
- Develop a communications Plan to alert key stakeholder groups
- Identify key business processes
- Reconcile potential employee displacement
- Plan for maintenance and testing
- Create an active command center
- Meet regulatory requirements
- Prioritize and protect critical business processes that keep your business operating
Disaster Recovery FAQs
How do I know if our current disaster recovery setup is actually strong enough?
If you don’t have clear RTO/RPO targets for each critical system, haven’t tested full failover recently, or aren’t sure what depends on what, your DR readiness likely has gaps. A focused assessment can quickly show where recovery would break down.
What systems should be prioritized first in a disaster recovery plan?
Start with revenue-critical, customer-facing, security, and compliance systems. Then map the infrastructure and apps those rely on, so recovery happens in the right order—not just the easiest order.
Can we rely on backups instead of a full DR strategy?
Backups are only one piece. Without tested recovery steps, dependency mapping, and failover capability, backups may restore data but still leave systems unusable for hours or days.
What’s the difference between DRaaS and traditional disaster recovery?
Traditional DR often requires maintaining a secondary site. DRaaS replicates your environments to a secure cloud recovery platform, allowing faster failover with less infrastructure overhead and more predictable costs.
What are the most common mistakes companies make with disaster recovery?
The biggest ones are not testing regularly, assuming backups equal recovery, leaving plans outdated after IT changes, and not assigning clear owners. In real incidents, process confusion causes as many failures as technology.
What should we look for in a disaster recovery service provider?
Choose providers who can meet your required RTO/RPO, support your current platforms (cloud, hybrid, VMware/Hyper-V, legacy), provide secure off-site options, and run real DR tests with measurable outcomes. Proven experience in your industry and compliance landscape matters a lot.
How can disaster recovery consulting services help us beyond technology?
Disaster recovery consulting services align IT recovery with business priorities. They help define realistic downtime targets, identify hidden dependencies, build runbooks your team can follow under pressure, and create a testing program that keeps your plan reliable over time.
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We recognized early on that we did not have the skill sets or tools to tackle a red-alert emergency. That’s why we formed our partnership with Quest. 
