Jason Abrahamson

Recently I have gotten a lot of questions about building disaster recovery sites, and am actually working on a couple of DR designs. The one question I think I get the most is: “What is the most important part of building a disaster recovery site?” Every IT executive, manager, architect, or sys admin will give you a different response so I’ll just give you mine: Location

Now typically a site is picked for reasons other than disaster recovery. Eight out of ten times a site is picked based on location for business needs and IT gets a call “Hey Tom we’re opening a facility in New Orleans, Louisiana — we want to have that be a backup for this facility.” Well nobody stopped to think that wasn’t probably the wisest idea, but for some business reason it was — maybe because its close to a port? Whatever the reason, that was the situation you were dealt, but some IT executives are lucky. At larger companies the IT management is brought in to help make such decisions. SO if you’re one of the few lucky ones, what are things you need to take into consideration when picking a site?

As I said the most important is location. Most people think in order to have a DR site that means you have to actually have an operational presence in the area. In reality that isn’t the case at all. Since almost everything we do now days is based on technology you could easily have a facility managed by a small operations team in Boulder Colorado with IT operations farmed out to a local consulting firm. Sure there are some companies this would not work for, i.e.: a bank, but what about a distributor or e commerce company? Chances are if have a large enough web presence to worry about a DR site then you have multiple distribution centers throughout the country.

Assume for a second you’re a large distributor with operations all over the country. Perhaps you picked your distribution centers based on business needs for transportation or for your customers and not on disasters. Your corporate office is located in the heart of New Orleans Louisiana. Following the aftermath of Katrina, your distribution center in Mississippi, and Texas have been hammered by the storm. Corporate is completely in shambles with 5 feet of water in the computer room and virtually nothing left to the 1st floor of your building.

It’s OK though. You still have your third distribution center in South Carolina. The storm moved north in the east making communications to the east coast intermittent all day, but none of that matters because your small DR site is in Phoenix Arizona. The weather in Phoenix is 110, Sunny, and clear skies. Your website is still taking orders, your small operations team is answering the phones from concerned customers, and your backup outsourced operator standing by service is fielding overflow.

Why is this possible? Your IT staff took into account that building a DR site in South Carolina, Mississippi, or Texas was probably not the wisest choice they could make. They drafted a proposal that got rack space in a cage at the local data center in Phoenix. They installed a IBM blade center to host your website, front end exchange server, domain controller, and NetApp san syncing 24/7. They connected to this rack with a private Ethernet line running at 100mbs, and to the small local office location using the same. Your phone system is voip and AT&T knows your corporate office is down so its routing your 1800 number to the Phoenix DR site.

Congrats, you just took a 1,000+ person operation and ran it completely independently and free of just about every natural disaster with 25 people. This would allow the executive team to get to the DR site and begin rebuilding the operations more largely and asses the damage of their distribution centers.

So building a DR sites of today is something that is much more in-depth than simply buying hardware shoved into a room syncing your files. My feeling is a lot of engineers only look at the IT side of building a DR site — hence why I wrote this article. Consideration needs to be given to business needs, and cost limitations.

I could give you a check list for building your DR site, Needs, Location, Hardware, People, Connectivity, but that wasn’t the point I was trying to make here. There are cost effective ways to prepare for the worst and guarantee your future.

So last week Liz and I were having dinner with our friends Eric & Elissa. We started to discuss Social Networking and the “social networking phenomena” that has been created on the internet. It’s amusing, you can follow somebody on Twitter, read their blog on Facebook, Myspace, and if they’re a subject based blog like mine probably on Digg. You can track them around the planet through GeoCaching, and catch up with them through instant messaging. The substance of our conversation though is this a “good” thing? Sure social networking can open tons of doors for you. You can make friends you would not have otherwise made, find jobs you would not have otherwise found, and maybe even find the love of your life. Liz and I indirectly met on the internet, and the internet allowed Elissa and Liz to expand their friendship and become the best of friends.

SO now that we know the pro’s to social networking, what are the cons? Well as younger generations are becoming more technologically advanced than previous generations ever were it stands to reason that the school yard bullying will continue on the internet. People seem to be more fearless on the internet. Those who have no confidence in public are quick to find confidence on the internet when attacking somebody 2,500 miles away from them. What is the harm right?

Social networking and what has become of social networking reminds me of the movie “He’s just not that into you” — “I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies.” The sad part is it’s absolutely true. Today we have created a world on the internet that has lowered the level of debate in the country and created just more drama and hostility. High school girls gossip to each other on mypsace and facebook, rumors spread like wildfires, there is no security, no privacy no trust. You message your friend on Facebook, Twitter about it, his girlfriend reads your twitter, logins into his facebook, reads what you wrote, and WHAM drama insues.

The social networking bubble is nothing more than a gigantic pot that can literally explode at any minute and completely destroy your entire social life — and for what? Two sentences on the wrong person’s profile? You post something, perhaps a blog, a statement, people make comments you don’t like — you delete them — what is that? You can speak your mind, but can’t accept the criticism? You are a fan of somebody or a politician, chef, restaurant, whatever, you talk about it, somebody else doesn’t agree and suddenly you’re waged in this cyber war posting hatred things on each others profiles. It ends with you deleting them, them deleting you, and exchanging text messages that make Ari Gold look like an angel.

Our society thrives on this, embraces it, news outlets use it to connect, heck, even the President of the United States used Twitter. What have we become? Is this a society of staying completely connected, or a society that thrives on drama. Our response now is like “Oh I’ll show them, I’ll unfriend them from myspace” or “HAH! I blocked you on facebook.” It’s as if these social networking technologies, and how much you use them have become a status symbol. You’re either in or you’re out but you can’t be both. You can’t even raise the level of debate in the country because people share opinions and either delete you, or have 500 other people make comments to bury yours.

The irony of course is this blog is RSS feed to linkedin, facebook, and will likely be dugg — but that’s ok. I have no problem with the technology, in fact, I think Social Networking is great, but I think we as a society need to really re-evaluate our obsession with it. It is sad, but I’m probably a minority in the sense that every “friend” on facebook I actually know. Yes, its good to stay connected, and things like twitter have allowed people who would not have otherwise communicated with common folk (i.e.: Ashton Kutcher) to reach an audience — but what really has this whole thing turned into? It seems like more of a circus than anything else

Keeping with more of the irony, I’ll even tag Eric & Elissa in this blog since I mentioned them.

Today is System Admin day! Show your admin love and give them a hug, let them leave early, buy them food and/or booze. Just show them appreciation you would not otherwise show them, like saying “Hello” in the hallway.