Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (
More info?)
In article <O5QYvXABB88BFAMt@salmiron.co.uk>,
Nicholas D Richards <nicholas@salmiron.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <cstmpg$fvi$1@panix5.panix.com>, Al Dykes <adykes@panix.com>
>writes
>>In article <MPG.1c5b781ba7a432c49897cc@news-server.nyc.rr.com>,
>>Louise <none@nospam.com> wrote:
>
>snip
>
>>>Major problem is that home and work are in the same location. Therefore
>>>very frequent offsite updates are not practical.
>>>
>>>The safe is a Sentry made for the home/office. They say "2 hour fire
>>>protection" and "water resistant".
>>>http://www.sentrysafe.com/Products.asp?m=A3810
>>>
>>
>>
>>>HOW would I know whether it is designed to emit water - they certainly
>>>don't say anything to indicate that and they do say it's water
>>>resistant.
>>>
>>>Although a bookcase would provide relative temperature and humidity
>>>constancy living in the northeast does present temperature and humidity
>>>changes. It also provides absolutely no fire protection.
>>>
>>>Louise
>>
>>If you RTFM for the product you'll find that the manufacturer
>>specifically says NOT INTENDED FOR COMPUTER MEDIA. That would be a
>>clue.
>>
>>A house is not particularly good for humidity unless an expensive
>>humidy control system is installed and used. You'd know if you had one
>>by the electric bill. Unless you use year-round HVAC there is too much
>>temp variation.
>>
>>A bank safe deposit box is good. Bank vaults have a controlled
>>environment.
>>
>
>Backups to be effective have to have a proper rotation between (at
>least) father, son and grandfather, with at least an element of off-site
>storage.
>
>Backups have to be done regularly and restores tested on a regular
>basis.
>
>How much you spend depends upon what it would cost you if you lost your
>data.
>
>I know of one company that did the risk assessment and found that it
>would be out of business immediately if it lost its data. Spent a lot
>of money on a large (you could have hidden the IT department staff
>inside the safe) fire proof safe designed for data storage, with a
>large margin of for the period of fire and water that it had to survive.
>This was in the days of EDS disks, you know, 11 large dinner plate
>platters mounted on a spindle and when removed encased in a clear
>plastic cover. The Honeywell system did not provide for tape storage,
>EDS would be fine even for back up.
>
>One assumes that the safe and disks survived the fire and the fireman's
>water, but they did not survive the descent from the 5th floor IT suite
>to the lower basement, nor did the disks.
>
>I have heard rumours, but it could be an urban myth, that some companies
>had their IT sites and their off site storage in each of the twin
>towers.
The NYC offices of Sun Systems. A big office that had no offsite
storage for the local data. It was a big office. I had not heard that
teh "offsite" was the other building but it makes sense, or we are
talking about different companies.
>
>The lesson is to run a proper rotation of back-ups, do it frequently and
>rotate the media between off-site and on-site. Your off-site store
>should be far enough away that a single event will not wipe out your
>site and the off-line site. The off-site must not be so far away as to
>discourage the regular rotation. You may therefore be able to come to
>an agreement with a friend who lives reasonable close by that you
>provide off-site storage for each other.
>
>Then you may not need to keep the back-ups in a fire proof safe. You
>may need to keep them secure if the data, is sensitive or would be
>valuable to some person of evil intent if they got hold of the data.
>
>--
>Nicholas David Richards -
The safe isn't important for disaster/recovery. Offsite is _very_
important. I tell small business owners to get in the habit of taking
their daily critical data backup home in their jacket pocket every
day.
In business it doesn't take a fire to make your computer systems
inaccessable, at last for days. Weather can do it. In NYC, doing
disaster recovery planning for Big Bank, I've seen buildings
containing our datacenters put out of reach for hours to days for
reasons like a power substation explosion that sprewed PCBs and
asbestos all over the street in front of a datacenter building. The
police blocked the entire area off for about a day. The bank had
hotsites and switchover plans. The branch and ATM customers never
noticed.
I also had a client lose the use of his entire office space for a week
because of a burnout fire on the floor below. My client had heavy,
heavy smoke damage but no water or fire damage. Exposed tapes and
floppies were unusable but the equipment was all OK after an expensive
D/R cleanup. The client had his data offsite, but didn't need it.
It's called business continuity planning. It starts with a look at
what the critical aspect of the business is and then planing for the
computers, paper files, and freqeuntly over looked, the people.
Sometimes an "loss of income" insurance contract is part of a
contingency plan.
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore.
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