W3 Discussion Comments

Many of you were surprised that companies were not better prepared for disasters. The preparation can be very costly. Also, the preparation can be next to useless if recovery procedures are not tested periodically.  This testing can also be expensive.  Sometimes busineses look at this expense and make a bad calculation on risk vs. reward. I once worked for a small company where the owner's attitude was "I'm going to sell the company before a disaster can occur".  

Many of you also identified the critical need to backup data and store it off-site. Some of you thought about backing up software as well. What about passwords and procedures? What if the only person that knows the administrative password is lost in the fire? I agree with the comment that the DR plan should be distributed to the appropriate people in both paper and electronic form.  Some of the electronic copies may become inaccessible during the disaster.

Having servers off-site ready to go allows for a quicker recovery. This is expensive in terms of initial investment and requires that data and programs be frequently replicated to the "hot backup" site. It is a business decision to determine how to balance costs vs. the business needed for a quick recovery. Could Dominican survive a one-week outage? (I would say yes).  Could the Chicago Mercantile Exchange survive a one-week outage? (I would say they would never recover their reputaion and lost business). 


War Story: Houston -- carry the tapes from the tape library to the second floor starting with the lowest shelf first.

Use Laptops because they are transportable:  DR vs. Security. Consider storing data centrally (N Drive).

Based on your responses, I should increase my scope of my consulting practice to include Disaster Recovery. Those of you who want someone to sue if something goes wrong would not hire me because I do not have enough assets to recover in a lawsuit. (Still coulnd't handle very large data centers). Outside consultant can provide technical and project management help but you cannot delegate to the outside consultant. Could faculty members do it?

Flying servers vs. backup and restore: Not an easy call -- explain. Take originals especially if planis lacking

Many of you identified cooperating with neighboring instituions. This emphasizes that top management (in this case the President and possibly to Board) needs to be involved in DR.  It is not just an IT matter to decide the recovery requirements and level of investment.

Brian Fredericks - process not a project, estimated time to recovery on each resource.

Evaluate all web sites carefully.  Some are just sites designed to "scare" you into hiring a particular consultant.  In fact, it appears that a number of different consultants are using the same "scare" stories.

What is my personal DR plan -- how will it work?

What would you do at Dominican? Find out what had already been done, figure out what needs immediate protection. (Merritt Poole, Business Impact Analysis)

Extra servers on the third floor (weight, cost, wiring)
What about a fire in Lewis?  Registrar, student records,????

The reality of selling the CFO Amanda