Salsa-DR Working Group
Minutes
February 29, 2008
Attending
Don MacLeod, Cornell University (chair)
Heather Flanagan, Stanford University
Rodney Petersen, EDUCAUSE
Valerie Lehman, State University of New York Information Technology Exchange Center
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)
Action Items
[AI] (Heather Flanagan and Don MacLeod) will develop a framework for the development of recommended practices in areas related to disaster recovery and report back within two weeks (March 14).
[AI] (Heather Flanagan and Don MacLeod) will develop recommended practices related to off-site back-up facilities (Stanford’s will be “hot” and used as an administrative test area, while Cornell’s will be “cold,” with agreements in place for equipment when needed).
[AI] Rodney Peterson will make contacts concerning the disaster recovery BoF at the Internet2 Member Meeting in April.
Ideas for Call Topics
If you have any suggestions for ways to improve discussions on these calls, please email Don MacLeod.
There was discussion about recruiting people to speak on specific topics on future calls and making that person and topic the focus for the call. If you have suggestions or ideas, please email Don.
Emergency Notification Systems
Heather discussed the interest in emergency notification systems. She pointed to discussions on the EDUCAUSE Business Continuity (BC) constituent group mailing list, where there was recently a surge in discussions about what people are doing in this area. She also found considerable resources from Rodney Peterson at EDUCAUSE about what the Net@EDU group is doing. They have sample RFPs for emergency notification systems and information on questions to ask vendors.
http://www.educause.edu/BusinessContinuityManagementConstituentGroup/12480
http://connect.educause.edu/taxonomy/term/4927
The ensuing discussion concerned whether emergency notification systems fits within the scope of this group. People want to talk about this topic in a variety of forums, but it may not be core to this group’s purpose. It was suggested that topics more closely related to business continuity issues and actual disaster recovery may be unique to this group and provide more of a service to the community.
Disaster Recovery Topics
Some topics that would be of interest to this constituency might include:
* Factors in developing inter-institutional agreements, either between two institutions or within a state-wide system.
* How to help smaller institutions, which may not have the staff or expertise, in developing DR plans and facilities.
* Business continuity planning
* Convincing senior managers to fund business continuity needs
Heather mentioned that Stanford is creating an off-site auxiliary data center and there are a number of concerns, such as power-cycling machines remotely, storage needs, and keeping the site focused on its main purpose. The site will be actively used by administrative services for development, but the site will not be placed into production unless needed.
Don reported that Cornell’s plans are somewhat different. Their facility will not be active and, in fact, would take over a fruit processing facility at the Cornell agricultural station in Geneva, New York. The university has agreements already in place for equipment and the facility has more than adequate cooling and power capacity.
Another approach is provided by those with mainframe sites. Most such sites have formal agreements as to where they can duplicate their environment in the case of a disaster. Most of these agreements are with commercial vendors. Might there, however, be an opportunity for schools to work together in this area? In addition, these agreements may provide a model for those who are not in a mainframe environment.
It was suggested that Heather and Don meet off-line and develop a framework for developing recommended practices documents. Once the framework is established, it was further suggested that Heather and Don develop such documents with an overview of their respective institution’s approach to an auxiliary data center.
Internet2 Member Meeting
A proposal was submitted to the Internet2 Member meeting program committee for a disaster recovery BoF. That is the only DR item submitted. There was a suggestion to recruit people to discuss business continuity plans. Rodney will make contact with potential resources in the D.C. area.
http://events.internet2.edu/2008/spring-mm/
Next call March 28, 1 p.m. (EDT)