HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Planning for Disaster Recovery Selecting a recovery facility is only part of a comprehensive disaster recovery program. You should prepare and implement a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. Your plan should detail resource requirements and procedures for each step in the recovery process. The Recovery Facility Locate your recovery facility close to the computer system you want to protect, but not in the same building or group of buildings. It should be in a different power distribution system. If you think your system may be damaged by a major earthquake, locate the recovery facility in another region of the country. The facility should have adequate security, provided by either security guards or controlled system access. System Compatibility The disaster recovery computer system must be compatible with your Data Center computer system. The main memory, disk drives, backup drives, and printers should allow you to perform necessary recovery operations without requiring you to reconfigure your system. The recovery computer system should also be expandable to meet your future needs. The number of telephone lines into the disaster recovery facility should be sufficient to support recovery operations. Telephone lines should be either of voice or data quality, depending on your requirements. Data communications equipment must be compatible with your data transmission requirements. Pay attention to required baud rates and other special requirements. Name representatives from your Data Center and the disaster recovery facility who will keep in frequent contact to ensure continued compatibility between computer systems. They ensure that changes made in either system do not affect the disaster recovery capability, and that upgrades in the Data Center computer system are quickly reflected in the disaster recovery computer system. Disaster Notification and Response Time A disaster can occur any time without warning. Your recovery center should be available 24 hours a day. The time from when you notify the recovery center to the time that your backup system is up and running is called response time. Response time requirements vary depending upon the business situation. A response time of four hours is normally considered a quick turnaround. Only authorized personnel should notify the disaster recovery facility to initiate disaster recovery. They should identify themselves to the disaster recovery facility by a prearranged codeword; and, of course, the disaster recovery facility personnel must act quickly and report promptly for recovery operations. Storage of Backup Tapes If you keep your regular backups at your Data Center, and the Data Center is destroyed by fire, the backups are also destroyed. Create a duplicate set of backups to keep at a suitable off site storage facility. In this way, you have a set easily accessible for routine problems and a set available in case of a major disaster. Arrange to have around-the-clock access to the backups, and to have them quickly delivered from the disaster recovery facility when necessary.