People-Planning Critical to DR

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Storage Networking World (SNW) -- Effective disaster recovery is about much more than data replication, failover strategies, and backup tapes. This was the warning from IT managers and CIOs in the sunshine state this week, who warned that users should not forget the all-important human aspect in their disaster recovery plans.

"Your staff is very, very important," warned Glenn Exline, manager of advanced technology at defense contractor Raytheon Co. , during a keynote this morning. "When you're planning for something like a hurricane you have to make sure that your staff is prepared to deal with it, not only at work, but in the home as well," he said.

The exec, who is responsible for IT systems support at Patrick Air Force base in Florida, home to the 45th Space Wing, used his keynote to describe the human impact of a hurricane. "For us, the biggest challenge would be if, god forbid, a category three or a category four came ashore, and we lose a lot of the infrastructure -- people are struggling to come into work."

Other attendees urged users to make meticulous plans for both their staff and their IT systems. "You have to plan for these human assets," added Clif Morgan, the former technical support manager at Oxford University Press, now a director for managed services firm Citadel Perimeter. "You have to document the system to the extent that it can be brought up by somebody else."

Over in Minneapolis, Randy Pool, senior engineer at Northwest Airlines, agreed that documentation is key, warning that IT managers should expect the worst. "You need to have the playbook [written] down -- you have to assume that there are no survivors."The exec explained that Northwest Airlines has already developed in-depth "scripts" containing file server host names and IP address, for just such an eventuality. But in the Midwest, hurricanes are hardly Pool's number one priority. "Outside of a tornado, the biggest problem for us would be a biohazard or a dirty bomb," he explained, adding that his IT operation is relatively close to the Mall of America.

Northwest Airlines, however, has already worked out what to do with its staff in the event of a crisis. With the firm's disaster recovery site and reservations center located in the same building, he said, it would be relatively easy to find room for IT staff. "That gives us somewhere to put butts," he explained. "Some of those [reservation] people could be taken out and the IS people could take over."

The disaster recovery site is also equipped with Virtual Private Network (VPN) links, according to Pool, which would enable IT staff to work remotely.

But other execs at SNW agonized over the difficulty of placing additional strain on their staff at a difficult time. "It's harder than heck when you're in the middle of a disaster to put someone on an airplane -- they have a family, they have a home," explained Charlie Pelton, CIO of Clearwater, Fla.-based Market Street Mortgage, which faced a total of 15 hurricanes last year.

The CIO also had advice for other IT managers who may find themselves in a hurricane Katrina-style situation where communication links are down. (See Hurricanes Spark Security Threats, Peak 10 Prepares for Storm, Bank Battens Hatches, and Cisco Mobilizes for Katrina Relief.) Staff, he said can still keep in touch with each other even if they are unable to make calls from their cell-phones. "The one thing that did work for us was text messaging from the cell-phones, because it takes a lot less bandwidth," he explained.Although most of the disaster recovery talk in Orlando was, unsurprisingly, focused on acts of God, Pelton warned that pandemic preparation is also high on the agenda. (See Will DOD Catch Flu?, Panel Ponders Preparedness, Suppliers Prep for Pandemic, and CIOs Ponder Potential Pandemic.) "My son is a law enforcement officer and you would think he was a biohazard guy if you look in the trunk of his car," he said.

James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch