Why Wireless Isn’t

Even wireless networks depend on a wire of some kind, it might not be attached to your handset or computer, but somewhere along the communication chain there is a wire… and if that wire is severed… well… then there will be an outage. In a storyfrom California earlier this week, sabotage was blamed for the severing of fibre optic cables which resulted in outages for mobile phones, landlines and Internet services. So what – well, companies need to be prepared for every eventuality in their disaster recovery / business continuity planning (DR/BC) and nowadays that has to include communications.

Disasters don’t have to be on-site to effect you and in the case of communication cables can be a relatively long way away and still have an effect. By asking questions to your service provider(s) you will be able to plan for an outage. Could you re-route the main switchboard through a different service, how about email? In the case of your datacentre, is it possible to have multiple Internet service providers, with different access points and cables?

IT is now a critical part of operational risk and as such the scenarios and planning around potential disaster needs to be re-examined. While this was a case of sabotage, more often than not it is a careless contractor digging up the road who severs cables… its better to be prepared for such an occurance than not…

April 17, 2009 | Filed Under Availability, disaster recovery | Leave a Comment 

Business Continuity Failures Costs The UK £11 Billion

New research from the Business Continuity Institute has shown that overlooking risks costs UK firms around £11 billion. The issue they highlight is one of looking at suppliers, especially in the economic downturn. In essence, would your company survive if your key supplier went out of business?

They have also produced a nice simple survival guide to help weathering the economic downturn. There are 18 self-assessment questions which will make you think through some of the issues – and might even nudge you into reviewing your Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity plans.

April 17, 2009 | Filed Under disaster recovery | Leave a Comment 

(Virtual) Disaster Recovery

As virtualization takes the IT world by storm, the disaster recovery (DR) plans are only just beginning to catch up. The problem is this… you have a server and it runs an application. Traditional DR looks at the server and says ‘we need another one of those’ – so this is a little simplistic, but in essence its true, and more to the point, it works. Now lets bring in virtualization, one machine is no longer one machine it is multiple machines. Each could well be at different patch levels and so it is not just a case of duplicating the hardware but ensuring that the virtual environments are also up to date.

Results from a recent survey has said that 55% of people are revisiting their DR plans because of virtualization – which is good. BUT… it also highlighted that only 37% of respondents back up their virtual systems! Before virtualization that would be seen as a travesty and an accident (or disaster) waiting to happen, so why is this the case now? Lack of tools is the basic problem. But if you haven’t got the tools why go with the technology. There are the tools out there, including those to backup virtual systems – its time to look at the risks and avoid the hype. Virtualization offers great benefits, but treat it with the respect it deserves or it will come back to bite you.

September 2, 2008 | Filed Under Virtualization, disaster recovery | Leave a Comment 

Time To Check Your DR/BC Plans?

The UK had some unexpected power outages yesterday and it no doubt caught a few companies off guard. One hospital had to cancel operations as the backup power generator failed. We take power for granted, you switch on a light and it works – but this shows that we shouldn’t. While it was a ‘freak event’ that caused it, this is what usually causes ‘disasters’.

Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity (DR/BC) plans are only any good if they are regularly tested. You don’t need to carry out complete tests every week, but there should be a schedule for partial and complete testing. Power outages are probably the most likely cause of a disaster (although last year it was flooding), so regular testing of emergency generators need to happen. If generators are fired up then they do use fuel, so make sure that it is replaced (unlike one company who didn’t do this and so they stopped after 15 minutes). Regular testing of critical application fail-over also needs to happen. Application dependencies are increasingly complicated, so failing over to a disaster recovery sight becomes more complex. Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) add further to the complexity providing functionality that you may not be in control of – DR plans need to take these into account as well. What if your 3rd party mapping service goes down – what will replace it?

In the US they have rolling brownouts (scheduled blackouts) in South Africa there are regular blackouts (2-3 a week), this keeps the IT department and the DR/BC teams on their feet. We are lucky to have a better power supply, but it isn’t perfect – so check your contingency plans today.

May 29, 2008 | Filed Under Availability | Leave a Comment