Salsa-DR Working Group Conference Call
September 14, 2007
**Attending**
Don McLeod, Cornell University (chair)
Rodney Petersen, Educause
Greg Monaco, Great Plains Network
Ken Schreyer, Penn State University
Walter Patruska, University of San Francisco
Joe St. Sauver, Internet2/University of Oregon
Aaron Lafferty, Ohio Supercomputer Center
Bob Dixon, Ohio State University
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)
**Action Items**
[AI] Don will send an email to the working group email list to begin a discussion about the BoF agenda.
[AI] Don will look at vendors for a possible technical presentation and line up members to talk about their recent experiences with disaster recovery.
[AI] Don will poll the email list about whether to hold the next call, which falls the day after the I2 Member Meeting (Friday, October 12).
**Internet2 Member Meeting**
There is a Disaster Recovery BoF scheduled for the Internet2 Fall Member Meeting in San Diego. The BoF will be October 8, 11:45 a.m. – 1:15 p.m.
(see http://events.internet2.edu/2007/fall-mm/sessionDetails.cfm?session=3472&event=273
Don is considering two broad categories for the program. One is to solicit I2 members to share their recent experiences in terms of disaster recovery issues. The other would be to have a vendor make a presentation. Such a presentation would be technical in nature and not be viewed by the vendor as a venue for a sales/marketing presentation.
On the last call, for example, Shannon Meadows of the NTI Group mentioned that she has a vendor-neutral presentation on emergency mass notification systems.
Don mentioned that he had been approached by Sun Microsystems to do a presentation about their mobile, off-site disaster recovery system. He will investigate this further and see if they would be able to send the appropriate person to the BoF.
The working group agreed that Don should pursue these options, as well as consider hearing from universities that are working together to provide emergency virtual hosting in the case of disasters. Loyola Marymount and Bowdoin were mentioned in the last call. Stanford and Duke are also working together.
[AI] Don will send an email to the working group list to begin a discussion about the BoF agenda.
**Priority Working Group Activities**
Don provided the list of priorities gathered from previous calls. The goal is to identify member institutions who are active in these areas and who could report back to the working group on issues they discover along the way. This would eventually result in best practices recommendations. Suggested areas include:
- emergency email hosting
- emergency virtual hosting
- cooperative backup service
- prioritizing business systems for external hosting
- cooperative NOC monitoring
Joe mentioned that he will be doing a presentation on dealing with high-pain, low-probability events in a cost-effective way; for example, a pandemic flu outbreak or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) issues.
Greg mentioned that he is in hearing about approaches for backing up research data that may not be a part of campus infrastructure. He is working with researchers on backing up their data, but that data is sometimes not part of the campus network, or not part of the network that is regularly backed up. Many times, these are huge data files.
**Emergency Messaging Protocols/Procedures**
Don mentioned that Cornell’s policies come from the approach that users must be protected from spam. This can stand in the way of legitimate needs to quickly communicate with a large number of people. Cornell is looking at their policies to determine how these legitimate needs can be accommodated, as well as the most effective delivery systems for such messages. Email is not the only method and sometimes is not the most effective. One university, for example, is looking at working with NOAA to get messages out their low-power weather radio system.
Identifying these issues and putting together a matrix of institutions and the methods they use could be a good project for this working group.
There may also be opportunities for Internet2 to provide a service, or for Internet2 members to cooperate. Cornell, for example, has hired an outside agency to provide emergency email messaging. But would it make more sense for Internet2 to provide this, or for an Internet2 member cooperative to provide this?
**Securing Institutional Data on Laptops**
A question came up about backing-up and securing institutional data that may reside on faculty or staff laptops. Walter Patruska said that the University of San Francisco will use an outsourced remote back-up service. They will roll-out this service on all laptops and it will be available from any network, no matter where the laptop resides. This will be a centrally administered automated back-up. The university has also implemented hard drive encryption on all laptops.
**Cooperative Resource Matrix**
Working group members are reminded to go to the wiki and fill in their institution’s data on the cooperative resource matrix: https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/salsadr/DR+Exchange+Matrix
**Future Topics**
Ken Schreyer from Penn State suggested a discussion of emergency communications and emergency phone centers. He hasn’t found much information, based on searches of other university web sites.
**Next call—Friday, October 12 or November 9, 1:00 p.m. EDT**
[AI] Don will poll the email list about whether to hold the next call, which falls the day after the I2 Member Meeting (Friday, October 12).