Storage in the Crosshairs

The recent conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia may have shocked the world, but at least one Georgian IT exec managed to make light of a difficult and dangerous situation.

Late last week, when the crisis started to unfold, Byte and Switch sent a slew of emails to businesses in the Georgian capital Tibilisi to see what impact the fighting had on their disaster recovery plans.

Here is the sole response, from a spokesman for a Georgian Web hosting company, who surely wins our "wry sense of humor" award for 2008.

Byte & Switch: What disaster recovery plans do you have in place to cope with the current situation in Georgia?

Answer: I bought a ticket to Moscow.Byte & Switch: How are you protecting your server and storage infrastructure?

Answer: I asked the preacher to bless my servers.

Byte & Switch: What action are you likely to take if the military situation escalates?

Answer: I will put on a t-shirt "I love Putin" and start to speak Russian... But I am also planning to dig a deep hole in the ground for myself and for my servers, it might become useful. God Bless America.

Thankfully, Russia called a ceasefire earlier today, ending five days of bitter fighting, although this is clearly one part of the world where users are dealing with bigger issues than spam and server downtime.0