Case Studies
DSA News Briefs
Events
Press Releases
Publications
|
Case Studies
DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING
Project Overview
In the second half of 2005, DSA resources successfully completed a project within a large Pharmaceutical Manufacturer and Supplier, providing the client with business continuity and contingency plans that would enable them to continue their business operations in the event of a significant business disruption.
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, there has been a significant increased focus on and sensitivity to business continuity planning and disaster recovery. Having acknowledged this business risk, DSA’s client decided to build the infrastructure for a fully fault tolerant ancillary data center to support the operations of their primary production facility. This would allow for rapid recovery and timely resumption of critical operations following a wide-scale business disruption. The first priority was to identify the business-critical applications using a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) process. In doing so, the BIA process identified fifty mission critical business applications. The next priority was to develop comprehensive disaster recovery plans that would be used to restore operations in the event of a disaster. Additionally, DSA’s client had no procedures or methodologies in place to implement and test their disaster recovery operations. Realizing a lack of in-house expertise, DSA was brought in to develop methods and procedures, build disaster recovery plans, and test the effectiveness of recovering business applications.
Solution Description
DSA provided a consultant with considerable industry experience in developing and implementing disaster recovery solutions. Due to corporate mandates which necessitated all critical business systems be fully fault tolerant by the end of the third quarter of the same year, the project timeline was aggressively scoped for approximately six months to fully implement and test a working solution.
For this project, DSA took the approach of simulating an enterprise-wide disaster recovery exercise that would take into account the implications of a major disaster which would require all mission critical systems to become recovered at one time. DSA’s approach was all encompassing and looked at every component of data center operations, including infrastructure, databases, servers, enterprise storage systems, application software and monitoring systems across all corporate operating divisions. In order to not disrupt live production processing, the exercise was scheduled to occur over the course of an entire weekend and involved the planning and participation of over 100 employees. The parameters that would measure success were: all critical applications would be recovered in 24 hours or less, disaster recovery plans would be used to recover the applications and all applications would be up and running in the new datacenter. With these criteria in place, DSA took the lead in orchestrating the exercise.
In order to coordinate the logistics for such a massive effort, each application group was engaged in participating in operational planning meetings along with weekly status meetings to help prepare their disaster recovery plans. In addition, simulated walkthrough meetings were held in which roles, responsibilities, schedules and timelines were reviewed in preparation for the actual exercise. Diligent planning proved especially helpful since all participants knew exactly what their roles were and how their participation would affect the entire endeavor. The project schedule incorporated projected durations for each of the tasks along with the persons responsible.
Under the auspices of DSA leadership, and due to the active engagement of all parties, the actual exercise went flawlessly and completed several hours ahead of schedule. During a project wrap up meeting with senior management, DSA was credited with making the project a success and allowed the client to exceed their recovery time objective of less than 24 hours for all critical business applications.
Return on Investment
As a result of this project, the client was able to pass an independent audit predicated upon regulatory compliance that stipulated that all of their mission-critical systems must be recovered to a geographically dispersed datacenter in 24 hours or less. This accomplishment was disseminated across the company to the most senior management as a critical milestone in their large expenditure in building a remote datacenter and assured them that their most valuable business assets were protected against a major catastrophe.
|
|
|
