Most people remember Katrina, vividly, in fact. About 3 years ago I worked with a CIO that had been at Tulane University at the time she hit. He recalled after the disaster, the IT folks, himself included, got into small boats and recovered servers that were under water or in standing water inside the university.
What?! Yes, they actually did this and it's not that much of a surprise, unless he lied to me. Either way, it's a great example of a poor disaster recovery. While most people probably wouldn't have cared an ounce if those servers were recovered or not, it is impressive that they went to such lengths to retrieve that data. Although, should they have had too?
In our modern world, we have crazy weather (coughKatrinacough), people blowing up buildings, earthquakes, auto/plane/train accidents, fires, etc. that can cause the need of a disaster recovery plan in place for an organization to try to secure the integrity of their data and recovering it, should they need too.
But how does a company do that? Well they build what's called a contingency plan. Analyzing the business impact and their response plan should something disaster-ish. Then they develop a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Granted it's a lengthy process, but the worthwhile is not having to get in a boat after a huricane and go "rescue" servers from a server room. Had they planned their disaster recovery better it would have been backed up, off site, and those servers could have floated away and it wouldn't have mattered.
While we (IT professionals) tend have a lot of different issues on our plate with regards to making our IT world go round...I think we sometime miss the important stuff. Like disaster planning.
My mom always told me, "it's better to have it and not need it...than need it and not have it."
Well said mom! Now to get the IT folks on board with this mind set.
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