Disaster Recovery

Novell Cool Solutions: Feature
By Timothy Leerhoff

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Posted: 15 Dec 2004

If you think it can't happen to you -- think again! Here is a four-part series on disaster recovery, based on a real-life success story. Get the details here, get a plan, and get ready!

The Disaster

Part 1 - Underwater Data
Part 2 - Hard and Soft Data Recovery
Part 3 - If You Rebuild It, They Will Come
Part 4 - Planning for the Future

Disaster Recovery, Part 1 - Underwater Data

It was a glorious mid-November morning. As I was heading to a client, I couldn't help thinking what a great day this is going to be. A warm Friday in Minnesota, sun shining, lighter than normal traffic, a fun project starting?.. Life was great!

Then came "THE CALL."

To give you some background, I am a network consultant and have been for many years. One of my long-term clients is Oakwood Insurance Agency, Inc., where I have been their IS manager for over 10 years. In that time, they have grown from one PC and a loud dot-matrix printer to 8 locations, 1 Novell file server, one NT Terminal server, and one NT management server. We have added a new T1 line to the Internet, allowing the remote offices from as far away as Oregon access to the Applied Management system. I have been at the design end of the whole process, choosing vendors, hardware, software, etc. Needless to say, they are a favorite client of mine.

My cell phone rang as I drove down the freeway; I noticed it was from Oakwood's office manager. I answered it, "Hi Diane, what is up?" Little did I know what was coming.

A very excited Diane exclaimed, "There is water in the basement offices!" Stunned, I was able to get out a, "What?" as I tried to not drive into the ditch.

The server room was in the basement, as were the offices of the office manager and two corporate CSRs. Also, all the paper filing ? all 20 file cabinets of it. Halfway down the stairway, one corporate CSR gaped at the flooded hallway as the realization hit that the "incident" down the street that had all the roads in the area blocked had a more personal ring.

After Diane finished explaining the initial situation, and that she had already called the owner, I told her to NOT let anyone into the water for any reason until a professional had killed power to ALL the downstairs circuits. The last thing that I wanted to see was a headline about someone being electrocuted in a basement flood.

As there was nothing I could do until the water was pumped out so that I could get to my servers, I continued to my client with a more sober look. I checked in for updates throughout the day. The news seemed to continually worsen.

Read the full story here: Part 1

Disaster Recovery, Part 2 - Hard and Soft Data Recovery

(Note: I define "hard data" as physical paper files, notes, etc., and "soft data" as being information stored on the file servers.)

The prioritized immediate needs were:

Get the office WAN connection to the ISP running.
Get two servers back online: the Novell NetWare File/Print server and the NT terminal server for remote office connections.
Get the lower-level personnel operating at desks somewhere upstairs.
Save the paper files.

I was lucky in one area. The router/T1, hubs/switches, and backup tape drive hardware were all above "sea level," as the high- water mark was dubbed. The biggest issue was that the DHCP/DNS server had drowned. The easy fix was to assign static IP addresses to the PCs and set the DNS servers to the DNS addresses from the ISP. It was a real pain to go to each PC, but at least it was an immediate fix for the internet accessibility issue. Yay, one victory.

Read the full story here: Part 2