By Bruce Currin,
President & CEO of Sunrise IT Solutions Group,
adapted from an article by David Lane
As an IT architect, it is my job to build a robust, redundant system for my clients. What happens when the basic assumptions we make about disasters to IT systems change? Most disaster Recovery strategies assume that there will be an availability of people to be able to:
- go to the disaster recovery site
- take the tapes to XYZ recovery company
- make sure my disaster site is x number of miles away from my primary site.
Then comes…….
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
In the days following September 11, 2001, the IT people in the financial industry were forced to learn a lot of lessons and executed them quite well. But in every picture and description I saw, makeshift tables were layered with machines and wires, clearly set up on the fly by IT professionals…..in many cases after working long hours to get the job done. Disaster recovery of that scale worked. But what happens when the disaster is not a loss of systems, but a loss of access to the systems and a loss of the manpower to run them?
What if…..?
A VIRAL PANDEMIC STRIKES
In the event of a pandemic, the experts have made the following predictions:
First, absenteeism could be as high as 40%. For an IT staff of 10, that is 4 people out sick, either sick themselves or caring for someone who is sick.
Second, depending on severity, mandatory separation may be instituted. The standard is six feet. Think about how far from your co-worker your desk is right now. Think about how you get to work, and how you would get to work if you could not sit within six feet of someone. It puts a whole new spin on the issues of mass transit.
Third, depending on the management of your company, rotation schedules might be implemented where half the staff is at home while half the staff is in the office. What sort of impact would that have on your IT services and your ability to manage your IT infrastructure? And are you ready for the level of remote access requests that will come flooding into the department and the issues of fulfilling these requests?
COST CUTTING in CORPORATE AMERICA: Why is it always in the IT department?
As I have said a number of times, those of us who work in IT just cannot win. When things are humming along smoothly, the bean counters are wondering why they are paying us, and when things are crashing down around you, the bean counters are wondering why they are paying us. In tight times, IT is almost always the first department to suffer cuts. Usually, those cut are at the top and the bottom of the stack, leaving those in the middle to bear the load, often without being properly briefed on the various back doors, trap doors and the ever popular what does that box do?.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a number of companies, in cost cutting moves, dumped real estate and went to remote access. Over the last five odd years, those telecommuting trends have reversed as management and employees want to be seen as valuable (and thus remain employed), and the communications lines have been slashed as a useless expense, without the forethought of disaster preparedness. As IT people, we are beholden to the budgets. Most of us work for companies that are more concerned with the quarterly stock price and how it can be boosted for the next quarter, with very little long term strategic planning being done. But it does not have to be this way.
How to help your clients be cost effective AND have a good disaster recovery plan
It is our responsibility to exercise the disaster recovery plans. So we have the opportunity to apply new tactics to the disaster recovery scenarios. Suggest that the next DR test include a 40% staff cut. Roll dice, generate the names randomly, whatever works for you, and tell them just not to show up. Can you put the systems back on line? What happens if you cannot get the tapes to the DR site? What happens if your remote access systems do not work? These are only some of the things we should be thinking about and preparing for.
As IT professionals, we tend to get focused on hardware and software, in many cases down in the weeds so deep we do not see how all the parts go together, or what other parts are needed! So, as we sit in the middle of the flu season, hurricane season, or tornado season and with winter coming…..disasters are waiting out there with a real scary potential. Remember, as IT professionals, we should be considering an all-hazards approach in our disaster planning. And sometimes that means nothing happens to the equipment.
