RE: disaster plan for small shops -- MIDRANGE-L

Jim,

Something you need to consider...what does the client do?

Sure a hot site would keep you running if a hurricane takes out the building.  
But if the client's a manufacturer, and the manufacturing facilities are wiped 
out does it really matter if the computers can still run?

At minimum, I'd consider a generator for your client.  Then at least power 
outages, no matter what the cause, would be simply an inconvenience instead of 
a disaster.

If a hot/warm/cold site could really help you.  It's not going to be cheap 
going thru the big guys like Sunguard.  Figure at least a couple of grand a 
month for a cold site.

May want to look for regional providers.

Heck, if your office is a reasonable distance away and you have other customers 
who could benefit, perhaps you could offer DR service yourself.  The 
partitioning capability of the new i5's make it pretty easy to set up.

Thinking outside the box; when I worked for a independent pharmaceutical 
wholesaler we had a working relationship with another smaller independent on 
the other side of the state.  I proposed working with them to see if we could 
come to an agreement where each of us had an LPAR on the other's box used with 
a HA solution to provide for DR.  The idea being not only would we be able to 
keep the system up, but we'd be able to ship from the other wholesaler's 
inventory for a day or two if our single location was damaged/destroyed.  The 
other wholesaler would be able to do the same if something happened to their 
single location.

Of course the proposal never got anywhere.  If something happens to the 
building the company will probably go out of business.  What's sad is that they 
used to have multiple locations.  Most of which were consolidated into the 
current single location for cost savings.  However, the last secondary location 
was destroyed due a roof collapse during a heavy rain.  Luckily, they were able 
to recover the disks / backups from the destroyed location and do emergency 
processing / consolidation at the current location.


Good luck,

Charles Wilt
--
iSeries Systems Administrator / Developer
Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America
ph: 513-573-4343
fax: 513-398-1121
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jim Franz
> Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 8:33 AM
> To: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: disaster plan for small shops
> 
> 
> For 12 years this customer avoided any talk of a DR plan. 
> Last night an 18 wheeler took out 3 power poles at the front 
> of the site,
> and a city block is without power & phone. Barely missed 
> actual building.
> UPS has reached it's limit (about 4 hours) and the entire 
> computer room is out 
> (i5, 3-win servers, router, etc). This customer also in prime 
> hurricane location - SE Florida within 2 miles of coast.
> What is startup & annual cost of hot site? 
> How many do building generators vs remote site (or both)?
> This co heavily dependent on iSeries web site for order,
> and web access from within office. 
> Whole company gross less than 5m/yr (18 employees).
> 
> jim franz 
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