Disaster recovery solutions for IT systems: A Systematic mapping study

Abstract

Context: Organizations are spending an unprecedented amount of money towards the cost of keeping Information Technology (IT) systems operational. Hence, these systems need to be designed using effective fault-tolerant techniques like Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions. Even though research has been done in the DR field, it is necessary to assess the current state of research and practice, to provide practitioners with evidence that enables foster its further development. Objective: This paper has the following goals: to investigate state-of-the-art solutions for DR, as well as to systematically analyze the current published research and identify different strategies available in the literature. Method: A systematic mapping study was conducted, in which 49 studies, dated from 2007 to 2017, were evaluated. Results: Various DR practices are being investigated. The results identified a number of relevant issues, including reasons to adopt DR solutions, strategies used to implement DR solutions, approaches employed to analyze DR solutions, and metrics considered during the analyses of DR solutions. Conclusion: The number of strategies and reasons for adopting DR solutions is overwhelming. Hence, there was a need to provide a consolidated view of the field. Also, the results can help to direct future research efforts in this critical area.