Disaster Recovery And Business Continuity

Just like you, we rely on our IT systems to support our business objectives

Without these systems we may as well turn off the lights and go home, as it is almost impossible for us to operate without them.

In the mid 1990’s we decided that we needed to implement a Disaster Recovery plan. We then proceeded to implement this with Interactive Pty Ltd.

We chose Interactive because:

• they were able to cover multiple platforms,
• they demonstrated that they had sound procedures in place to guarantee the service they were providing,
• and importantly, the pricing represented excellent value for money.

We implemented disaster recovery for our own reasons before the AIFRS

What do these new standards mean for your business and what impact will they have? Our understanding is the intent of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the Australian equivalent, AIFRS, is to make available as much pertinent information about an organisation, which has a significant level of “Interested Parties”, as these Parties will need to make an informed decision about their risks in dealing with the Organisation.

This can extend to reporting on Business Continuity Risk and the steps taken by the organisation to mitigate this risk, for example “What Disaster Recovery plans do you have?”

Success Story

In our most recent Disaster Recovery test, we were working towards reducing the time taken to have our systems back up and running. Previously it had been taking approximately 24 hours. It was rewarding to find that our investment in a faster tape drive on our System i had resulted in a positive outcome. The complete test took only 8 hours from the moment we arrived at Interactive with our tapes until the system was fully restored and working again.

Disaster Recovery Tests are as important as having a Disaster Recovery Plan, and it’s important to do these at least annually.

Cautionary Tale

We recently helped a customer who had a disk crash only to find that none of their backups had actually worked for the last year. This has left them in a real predicament. As at the time of writing this article they were still working to recover some of their data.

Tip

In our backup procedures we finish with the system doing a read of the tape followed by printing out the list of files backed up. This gives us some peace of mind that the data has been written to tape. Of course the true test is in the test itself.

We really appreciate that every year without fail, Interactive contact us and ensure that we book in for a test. We also appreciate that Interactive continue to invest in their infrastructure. Some of the recent hardware that they have purchased has included IBM zSeries machines, IBM p570 servers and more recently an IBM i570, IBM p690, Sun E10k and E15k.

Talk To Us

If you’re uncertain as to whether your current Disaster Recovery plans are satisfactory, please ask us the next time we call and we would be very happy to share our ideas with you.