In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina, Wilma and company, there's been a sharp rise in the overall awareness of disaster recovery (DR) and the desire to improve DR capabilities. But the 2006 hurricane season represented something of a reversal from last year, and without the same high-profile disaster coverage, some companies may have been lulled into complacency. So it seems like a good time to reconsider some DR basics and discuss a lingering concern: the business-IT expectations gap.

I've written about business and IT alignment issues, a topic that has become standard fare in CIO-targeted publications. In the storage arena, we're seeing progress among forward-thinking companies toward better alignment of primary data and the beginnings of true business-driven, data-retention policies. However, DR is still one area where there's often a significant shortcoming.