As part of its Queensland flood coverage last month, CRN featured the State Library in Brisbane which managed to execute an effective disaster recovery plan which saved its collections and its IT systems, even as water entered its basement.
“It was all about following basic procedures,” said client services director Rory McLeod.
“Once we knew water encroached into the basements we knew there was a chance that we would lose power so it was about getting [backup power] checked and online and taking down essential systems as quickly as we could.”
The library systems were replicated and a library principle is “lots of copies keeps stuff safe - so it’s quite easy for us to point people at different servers at other state libraries”, he said.
His confidence in being able to recover in the face of disaster was reinforced by a written and annually updated disaster plan that included what to do to physically secure and protect an installation and how to handle the inevitable staff absences at a time of great stress. It included disaster scenario planning procedures to cater for contingencies.
But not all organisations were as confident in their abilities to come back from the brink, an Acronis report released last month found. It showed that boardrooms were denying Australia’s IT departments the backing they needed to recover swiftly in the event of a disaster.
Despite spending around the middle of the heap of the 13 countries surveyed, Australian IT workers said lack of board support sapped them of confidence their organisations could weather disaster.
Here at CRN we wondered whether the catastrophic floods in Queensland and Victoria may have made disaster recovery more front of mind with businesses, so we asked some leading providers if there had been a recent change in the number of inquiries about cloud computing as a solution.
Next: Sam Forbes, managing director, 6YS vs Ilkka Tales (pictured), managing director, Anittel
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