Businesses should test their disaster recovery systems on a regular basis, but this is not always practical or possible, an industry expert has claimed.

Writing on SearchWinIT.com, recovery expert Russell Olsen said that annual checks of disaster recovery systems would be very useful to many companies, but are hardly ever practical in reality.

"In an ideal world, every year you would take your disaster recovery team to an offsite location with nothing but your backup tapes and fresh hardware," he wrote.

"You would then carry out a flawless rebuild and restoration of your production systems.

"Unfortunately, most companies don't have the capacity to annually execute a full test of their disaster recovery plan. Even companies that are able to do that should still do something to supplement that practice."

In the meantime, Mr Olsen argued that regular walkthroughs of disaster recovery plans could help a company function if something unexpected occurs.

"An open discussion is good for reviewing how prepared your organization is for a disaster," he claimed.

"You'd be surprised at what you can get out of a half-hour lunch with your team."

Recently, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds announced that it was introducing a disaster recovery strategy based on its use of server virtualisation.