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Disaster Recovery, IT
Service Management, IT Job Description, Sarbanes Oxley, and IT Salary
Full news feed
June 11th, 2008
After You Recover from a Disaster You Must Handle the Media
After companies recover from a disaster, they need to
manage their images. Planet.com, an Internet Services provider, did
not do that after a major fire. Nothing was posted on their site.
The only news was on a media site (IDG - Computerworld). The story is
(Computerword) - The Planet.com Internet Services Inc. hopes
to have all 9,000 of its servers in its Houston data center back online later
tonight following a blast that shut down the facility on Saturday
afternoon.
  
When firefighters arrived at around 5 p.m., they could see
"light smoke" at the Planet data center -- the aftermath of an explosion in a
network gear room that produced enough force to move walls. Sprinklers quickly
doused whatever flames erupted; the fire was attributed to an electrical problem
with a transformer, according to a Houston Fire Department spokeswoman. There
were no injuries.
Although the data center says it has power systems that "are
designed to run uninterrupted" and a "fully redundant network operations center"
with diesel generators, the electrical problem exposed an apparent Achilles'
heel in its business continuity planning. Firefighters told data center workers
to turn off all the power, according Planet spokeswoman Yvonne Donaldson. That
meant the servers, even though they weren't damaged, were offline.
Approximately 6,000 of the affected servers were returned to
service early this morning. Another 3,000 were due to return online by tonight,
the company said. The Planet staff provided updates on the restoration on its
customer forum site, including a message from CEO and Chairman Douglas Erwin,
who wrote that some servers will be relying on generator power for a week until
normal utility connections are restored.
The Planet operates more than 40,000 servers at multiple
data centers and hosts more than 3 million Web sites.
While Planet data center staff worked to restore service,
users -- many of them small business owners -- wrote of their frustrations over
the outage on forum posts. Questions about the data center's backup capabilities
were raised, as well. One person, flynnibus, wrote: "You shouldn't put all your
money into one bank -- and you shouldn't put all your servers in one DC [data
center] if you want to be truly resilient."
more info
May 30th, 2008
Many Disasters are Magnified by Human Error
(Computerworld) A disk failure in a Sun Microsystems Inc. server caused
the Federal Aviation Administration's NOTAM database to crash for nearly 20
hours last week, according to the FAA.
 The NOTAM (notice to airmen) system provides notices to
airmen, or pilots, regarding airports, equipment and security issues. The system
went down late May 22 and was back up at around 7 p.m. on May 23.
Because of the disk failure, information had to be delivered to pilots
through local air traffic controllers and alternate systems, including a Web
site set up to disseminate the most up-to-date information, said a manager of
aeronautical information management for the FAA. However, flight safety was
never a problem, the FAA said.
"What happened was the drive in an end-of-life Sun box failed in the middle
of updating the information on the hard drive, so it screwed up the database,"
the FAA said.
That was the beginning of the complications. The FAA team replaced the
hardware and the drive which got the system running again.
The FAA already had the equipment to replace in place, they just had not done
it yet, and that is why the hardware recovery was quite simple according to the
FAA.
But even then, the system was running slowly, or in a deteriorated mode, and
it got so bad that his team decided to reopen the problem to see what was going
on.
As the technicians were working to fix the database, they decided to go to
the backup system. As they did that, they soon realized they had written the
error over to the backup system and had corrupted that system as
well. more info
May 30th, 2008
Role of IT in a Disaster Defined
The first steps the IT department
should take depend on how seriously a disaster affects
resources. Does it require a few desktops and a room off site to provide a
temporary recovery solution? Or does a larger plan need to be activated to move
PCs and servers to a "hot site" to restore entire applications and set up
temporary work facilities for a limited number of key workers to operate until
normalcy is restored?
But what good does it do for IT to restore
applications and data if there is no one there to run things? It is only half
the solution, albeit the first half. The second half is the contact information
for the business continuity piece. Recovering from disaster is less a solution
than a process. Governments must take control of their own destinies. In the
event of a disaster, a core team of people across all departments is typically
designated to continue business operations pending the restoration of a normal
work environment. These people need accurate information with which to call on
IT and on vendors for technical support or to report to work at a temporary
site. more info
May 30th, 2008
What Drives Disaster Recovery?
(Computerworld) As
more organizations adopt replication as a primary component of disaster
recovery, it's important to better understand some of the variances among
replication technology and to clearly set expectations with application owners
when planning replication deployments.
A common area of confusion in dealing with replication is the
distinction between consistency and synchronicity. Many newcomers to replication
tend to focus on synchronization issues when, from a recovery perspective,
consistency may be the true requirement from an application perspective.
So what is the difference and why is it important?
Synchronization implies complete and continuous fidelity between local and
replicated data stores. With true synchronous replication, a write operation is
not acknowledged until it has been written to the local storage system and
replicated to the remote storage system. This certainly provides a very high
degree of consistency, but it also carries with it high costs and significant
limitations regarding distance and latency that can impact application
performance.
 Synchronous replication is found primarily
in the domain of the top tier of enterprise storage offerings and is usually
reserved for those applications that are characterized by very high transaction
rates where the recovery and re-execution of lost transactions would be
difficult and costly.
The majority of replication is therefore of the asynchronous
variety -- meaning that there is some degree of variance, based on change rate
and available bandwidth, between the local and the replicated targets. In other
words, by definition, the source and target are inconsistent with one
another.
However, consistency still plays a critical role in the
recoverability of asynchronously replicated data. The key is in understanding
the interdependencies among related data components of a particular business
function and ensuring that they are consistent among themselves at any given
point in time at the target location. They may lag behind the original, but as
long as they are equally behind, the function or application should be
recoverable.
Although the notion of consistency groups is well established
among enterprise-class storage systems, it may be less so for other forms of
replication. Understanding consistency requirements and the ability of
replication technologies to meet them should be a high priority consideration in
disaster recovery design. more info
May 13th, 2008
Change Control Needs to be Implemented for DRP and BCP to Work
 Analysts confirm that approximately 80% of all
software released into production will fail; and 70-80% of the cost of ownership
of such business applications is related to finding and fixing these errors. In
order to increase productivity and promote cost savings, it is imperative to
consider the source of these failures, as well as the nature of the production
environments
Add to that the processes necessary to support a Business
Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan and enterprises have an ever increasing
complex problem. more info
May 10th, 2008
Disk from space shuttle crash recovered
(Computerworld) Researchers who extracted data from
a hard drive onboard the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia say the device was so
thoroughly damaged in the shuttles fiery crash that it just looked like a
cracked "hunk of metal" when it appeared at their door six months later.
Data recovery specialists at Kroll Ontrack Inc.
painstakingly retrieved 99% of the information stored on the charred 400MB
Seagate hard drive's 2.5-in. platters over a two day period after the device was
discovered six months after the 2003 shuttle crash. The device was found in a
dried up lake bed along the shuttle's debris area.
The successful retrieval of the data was disclosed in the April, 2008, issue
of the Physical Review E journal, which published data from tests performed by
the shuttle astronauts on the critical viscosity of xenon gas, according to
published reports. The results of the tests were stored on the disk and
retrieved by Kroll.
The Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into the
atmosphere of Earth on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven crew members and
scattering debris across Texas and Louisiana. more info
May 2nd, 2008
The Importance of a Business Resumption and Continuity Plan is Key to Disaster Planning
Disaster recovery has always been a key concern
in virtually all companies. But the widespread damage from Hurricane Katrina has
companies re-evaluating their planning, procedures and overall systems to make
sure they can survive a major outage.
Wherever data resides, it must be protected. With this
idea as the driving force, companies are looking for new and easier-to-manage
ways to safeguard company databases, records and files.
When a disaster
does strike (be it a fire, a flooded data center or a catastrophic malware
attack) companies need to take several steps to reduce downtime and get
operations back to normal.
A business resumption and
continuity plan should be in place before any disaster occurs. more info
May 1st, 2008
Mac Back-up released
Berkeley Data Systems released Mac Mozy public
beta, the first unlimited online backup service for Mac users
worldwide. The service allows Mac users to encrypt and automatically back
up all of their digital media content online, including collections from iTunes
and iPhoto.
 
Designed as a consumer service, Mac Mozy leverages
Apples innovative Spotlight Search technology, allowing users to easily select
the types of files they want to back up. The service installs quickly and runs
quietly in the background. Backup speeds vary from user to user, largely
determined by the upload speed of the consumers internet connection.
Mac Mozy offers an added measure of privacy by
allowing its users to choose between a Mozy encryption key and a private
encryption key. Incremental backups and block level differentials are included,
which means subsequent backups complete at a much faster rate than the initial
backup. Mozys servers also retain the most recent version of a file as well as
30 days worth of previously modified file versions. Customers may retrieve files
or versions of the files via the internet or by requesting a DVD restore with
next-day delivery. more info
April 25th, 2008
Risk Taken by Not Shipping Backup Tapes Off-Site
(Computerworld) University of Miami officials last week acknowledged that
six backup tapes from its medical school that contained more than 2 million
medical records was stolen in March from a van that was transporting the data to
an off-site facility.
The vice president of communications at the university said a vehicle
used by Archive America Ltd. to transport the patient data was broken into in
downtown Coral Gables, Fla. Thieves removed a transport case carrying the
schools computer backup tapes.
For reasons the VP could not explain, Archive America waited 48 hours
before finally notifying the university about the break-in and theft. Officials
from the transport firm could not be reached.
The university posted an alert about the incident a full month after the
backup tapes were stolen. In a statement, the senior vice president for medical
affairs and dean of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said,
Even though they were confident that the patients data was safe, we felt that it
was in the best interest of the physician-patient relationship that the incident
should be transparent.
Since the incident, the senior VP said that the university temporarily
stopped transporting backup data off-site. At this point, the University is not
transporting anything until they conduct their own internal evaluation of the
incident and see if there is anything that could have been done differently or
better. more info
April 19th, 2008
How Do Mobile Workers Get Protected in a Disaster
From mobile workers perspectives, up-to-the-minute information is the
life blood of their jobs. Regardless of whether they are in a home office or on
the other side of the globe, speed and dependability are the keys to
successfully doing their jobs. From an IT departmentÂ’s perspective, they must
support the needs of all employees, while diligently maintaining security
policies, which is becoming increasingly challenging now that the majority of
the workforce has stepped beyond the corporate walls. Can these two opposing
forces be reconciled? Can remote access be both fast and secure from any
location?
Data at rest is growing much faster than network throughput. That makes
it difficult to get backups completed on time and on budget – not to mention
trying to recover from an IT emergency.
The
first is to accomplish backups in a timely yet accurate manner. Given organic
data growth, and that each logical data object has between four and eight copies
somewhere in the network, even differential backups can be tough to fit into
assigned windows. Synchronous or live-to-live data models are even more
bandwidth intensive and latency intolerant.
 
The
second challenge is minimizing downtime. In the event of a failure or disaster,
how quickly can backed-up data be restored? Considering a differential backup
can take 8 hours or more to complete, and only represents 10-20 percent of the
total data set, a full restore can be daunting. According to Ziff Davis
Research, the average organization has 94TB of managed storage, and getting that
data across the network only begins after the systems have been physically
restored.
Rather than add more bandwidth, or invest in expensive, dedicated storage
networks, WAN optimization can improve IP network performance sufficient to turn
recovery into continuity. To help meet the objectives outlined above, a WAN
optimization solution must be able to do three separate tasks for true business
continuity: restrict bandwidth to backup applications during the allowed window
and allocate it to critical applications in the event of a disaster, overcome
latency and bandwidth limitations on the wire, and provide acceleration to
roaming or displaced users redirected to alternative data
sources. more info
April 13th, 2008
The Magic of Creating a Disaster Plan - Data and Backup
There is some magic that happens when you follow some basic steps in creating
a  functioning Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Plan. You should start with:
- An objective to get back to a fully functioning data center and
business
- Know what data is necessary and what is nice to have
- Validate that you have the data you will need
- Assume that anything critical will fail
- Focus on quick solutions that will minimize outages
- Have sufficient resources available before you start
- Encrypt data but know how to get at it in an emergency
- Focus on Recovery Time Objective (RTO) with a Recovery Point Ojectivie
(RPO)
more info
April 2nd, 2008
During a recovery process what are the signs your staff is under stress
During a disater recovery processyou
will need all hands on deck. In addition to a entire range of other
personnel and resource issues, you will need to know how your team is
doing and is stress of the situation you are in causing things to go
badly.
Some of the things that
you should look for are:
-
Team members feeling close to
tears much of the time
-
Team members finding it hard to
concentrate and make decisions
-
Team members being short tempered
with people at home and at work
-
Team members feeling tired most of
the time and or sleeping badly
-
Team members feeling stretched
beyond their limits at the end of the day
-
Team members drinking and smoking
more to help them get through the day
-
Team members feeling that they
just can not cope
-
Team members eating when they are
not hungry
-
Team members feeling that they
have achieved nothing at the end of the
day more info
March 25th, 2008
We have a Disaster Recovery Plan - But Will it Work?
We have got a plan! - Many a CIO has come to rue
making such a blanket statement to a CEO regarding the companyÂ’s disaster
preparedness. A decade of regional calamities has shown that traditional
approaches to disaster planning have failed to keep organizations operational.
IT-focused recovery plans can leave the overall organization in the lurch
because they often do not address such business issues as handling a disaster
that is regional in nature; employee availability; communications; travel and
transportation; and data location and availability. But an integrated business
continuity and resilience plan can take some of the pressure off CIOÂ’s by
reducing the business impacts of a disruptive event, speeding recovery times and
delivering value to the organization—even if a disaster never
strikes. more info
March 19th, 2008
Disaster Recovery versus Business Continuity
Enterprises rely on business critical information; this
makes it imperative for IT departments to protect against unexpected data loss
from disasters. Both replication and backup involve large amounts of information
transferred globally but limitations in the WAN can make it difficult to execute
the plan effectively. A preventative plan in place should always include WAN
acceleration to facilitate disaster recovery.
more info
March 15th, 2008
Disaster Recovery versus Business Continuity
The term
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity are often used interchangeably. They
are in fact, different but complementary components of a business's overall
recovery and continuity planning. Whereas Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) is
concerned with the recovery of systems and infrastructure components, Business
Continuity Planning has a larger scope - namely, the determination of which
business components and functions need to be recovered - and those which can be
ignored. This paper explores several of the key components of a business
continuity planning effort. It also provides a high level framework for the
creation, implementation, and maintenance of a Business Continuity
Plan. more info
March 5th, 2008
Whaling Security Attacks Have Can Put Your Disaster Recovery Plan at Risk
For the last couple of years, security researchers
have been sounding warnings that phishers could turn their attention to
super-personalized attacks targeted at high-level corporate employees whaling attacks. Now, however, there
is growing evidence that this type of attack is moving from theory to
practice. The reasons? The bad guys are getting better access to the information
they need to bait these e-mails--both because they are getting better at mining
databases on compromised corporate sites, and because employees are providing
more useful information at networking sites such as LinkedIn and
MySpace.
Once launched, the results of a whaling attack can be
devastating. They are hitting the high-level executives and getting access
to these individuals entire workstations.
Like all spearphishing or
targeted phishing attacks, whaling involves personal information, but in this
case the targets are high-level, high-value individuals whose credentials,
if compromised, can endanger an entire organization. The targets are carefully
chosen, and the number of e-mails distributed is small. Where a massive phishing
attack might involve billions of e-mails sent from botnets with a million
zombies, whaling usually involves anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand
e-mails, which are sent from a botnet with perhaps 20,000 compromised computers.
Conventional methods for identifying phishing attacks depend on spotting a lot
of identical messages, so the small scale of whaling attacks makes them
essentially invisible to Internet scanners. more info
February 29th, 2008
SSD - Solid State Drives are a great Disaster Planning Solution
EMC may have been first out of the gate with an enterprise-class
solid-state drive (SSD), but it looks like the rest of the pack is ready to join
the field. There's a new round of start-ups and joint ventures aimed at
developing flash and SSD technology expressly for high-end enterprise
environments as opposed to traditional laptop and mobile device markets. The
newest player on the scene is Pliant Technology, led by Maxtor and Quantum
co-founder Jim McCoy. The company is making the rounds of leading venture
capitalists with plans for a new controller mechanism that will boost flash
performance up to RAM-quality, with possible demo models out by the end of the
year. Even closer to launch is the SSD PRO 7000 system from Imation, jointly
developed with controller technology from Mtron Co. The system is due out in the
first quarter and boasts a maximum read speed of 120 MBps, with a write speed of
90 MBps and 0.1 ms random access. According to industry observers, demand for
SSDs among enterprise users is white hot. more info
February 20th, 2008
Downtime Costs are High
ESG has found that there is an increase in the number of
companies and organizations requiring 24 x 365 days of IT uptime. In fact,
research indicates that 36% of enterprises will incur significant revenue loss
or other adverse business impact if they have even an hour or less of downtime
on their mission-critical applications. Almost 15% indicate they cannot tolerate
any downtime. Virtually any amount of downtime can mean lost productivity, lost
revenue, lost customers and lost opportunities -- not to mention damage to
brand. This is why you need a strong disaster proof solution. more info
February 15th, 2008
Janco finds over one third of enterprises will lose significant revenue with one hour outage
Janco Associates, Inc. (http://www.e-janco.com) has found
that there is an increase in the number of companies and organizations requiring
24 x 365 days of IT uptime. In fact, Janco research
indicates that 36% of enterprises indicate they will incur significant revenue
loss or other adverse business impact if they have even an hour or less of
downtime on their mission-critical applications. Almost 15% indicate they cannot
tolerate any downtime. In the past, this type of business demand was only
consigned to a relatively small group. However, many more organizations of all
sizes, in all industries and located across the globe, now require applications
to be running and data to be always available. The needs of these organizations
go far beyond simply recovery, requiring an environment that maintains business
continuity during and immediately after a disaster. more info
February 5th, 2008
Under Sea Cables Cut - Internet Service at Risk
(BBC) A submarine cable in
the Middle East has been snapped, adding to global net problems caused by breaks
in two lines under the Mediterranean on Wednesday.
The Falcon cable, owned by a firm which operates
another damaged cable, led to a critical telecom breakdown, according to one
local official.
 The cause of the latest break has not been confirmed but a
repair ship has been deployed, said owner Flag Telecom. The earlier break disrupted service in Egypt, the Middle
East and India.
The situation is critical for us in terms of
congestion, chief executive of Dubai's ISP DU, told The Associated Press,
following the most recent break.
Wednesdays incident caused disruption to 70% of the
nationwide internet network in Egypt on Wednesday, while India suffered up to
60% disruption.
Flag Telecom said a repair ship was expected to
arrive at the site of the first break - 8.3km from Alexandria in Egypt - on 5
February, with repair work expected to take a week.
A repair ship deployed to the second break - 56km
from Dubai - was expected to arrive at the site in the next few days, the firm
said.
Web returns
The first cable - the Fiber-Optic Link Around the
Globe (FLAG) - was cut at 0800 on 30 January, the firm said.
 |
INSIDE A SUBMARINE CABLE
1 Polyethylene
cover
2,4 Stranded steel armour wires
3,5 Tar-soaked
nylon yarn
6 Polycarbonate insulator
7 Copper sheath
8 Protective core
9 Optical fibres
Not to
scale |
A second cable thought to lie alongside it -
SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable - was also
split.
FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine
communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and
the Middle East.
SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East
Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.
The two cable cuts meant that the only cable in
service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3
system, according to research firm TeleGeography.
The firm said the cuts reduced the amount of
available capacity on the stretch of network between India and Europe by 75%
percent.
As a result, carriers in Egypt and the Middle East
re-routed their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and
across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
The cause of the break has still not been confirmed.
Initial reports suggested that it could have been snapped by a ship's anchor.
But Egypts communications ministry said damage to the
cables in the Mediterranean was not caused by ships.
The transport ministry said that footage recorded by
onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic
in the area when the cables were damaged.
The ministrys maritime transport committee reviewed
footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables
were cut and no ships sailed the area, a statement said.
Internet service providers said they expected India's
to be back to about 80% of its usual speed by the end of Friday.
In Egypt Minister of Communications and Information
Technology .said he expected to be at the same capacity within two days.
However, it is not before ten days until the
internet service returns to its normal performance. more info
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