Shorten the road to recovery: scheme features computerized blueprint as key to fast on-site restoration

Communications News, April, 1990 by Greg Bloom

SHORTEN THE ROAD TO RECOVERY

The recent hurricanes, earthquakes and fires are reminders of the great importance of "disaster recovery" plans for maintaining data-and tele-communications in the event of an emergency.

However, most companies' disaster recovery plans are limited to retaining computer backup services that provide off-site locations for continuous day-to-day operations.

While these services maintain your vital data processing abilities during the emergency, they do nothing to get your original system back up and running.

Your physical network can still remain out of operation while you are spending literally millions of dollars at your hot site.

Full disaster "recovery" means restoring your company's communications system to its original state before the disaster, getting your company back online, on site quickly.

Fast recovery requires a level of network documentation which only two years ago was impossible or impractical to achieve.

But today the communications manager has more options.

Computer backup services are a costly necessity for most companies.

Monthly rates range from $1000 to $30,000 just to secure use of these services in the event of an emergency, while the price tag for actual use can exceed $100,000 daily.

However, these costs are justifiable compared to the amount of money you could lose by being out of operation.

Day-To-Day Savings

Needless to say, however, the faster you return your own communications systems to operation, the more money you save on day-to-day use of disaster recovery services.

Examine your disaster recovery plan.

Could you rebuild your communications system following a disaster?

Do you have documentation showing the physical layout of your entire infrastructure?

Unfortunately, in the event of a significant disaster, few communications managers could reconstruct their system at all, much less in a timely manner.

This is due largely to the lack of a comprehensive documentation system showing the actual state of the configuration at any given time.

Such documentation is the key to fast, on-site restoration.

Information on the physical as well as logical design of your communications infrastructure is essential.

Knowing the types of equipment and cabling, their locations and their connectivity will ensure that you can quickly reconstruct your setup.

Fortunately, today this type of documentation is a natural byproduct of the industry's newly emerging design and documentation systems.

With these new systems documenting network design and changes as they happen gives an up-to-date "blueprint" of the communications system--which can be an integral component of your disaster recovery plan.

Full documentation provides information on all physical and logical network attributes.

Blueprint Info

Such characteristics as the brand of equipment and model numbers, location within the facility, connectivity and wiring schemes (including type, length and terminations of cabling) are some of the basic information that can be tracked by these new systems that combine computer-aided design (CAD) and database capabilities.

These capabilities are interactive so that updates entered into the database automatically update the CAD data and vice versa, thereby creating an up-to-the-minute record.

The CAD graphics provide managers with a complete "picture" of the communications environment.

This picture, and the database information, provide a true blueprint for timely network recovery.

The level of information available from these sophisticated CAD/database systems makes this a cost-effective investment for both day-to-day use and in disaster recovery.

Available in both PC and multi-user workstation configurations (the user's network size and complexity will help determine which is appropriate), these systems keep track of information in detail.

For example, the user has immediate access to lists of cable runs and trays, interconnections, manufacturer's part numbers and, significantly, the value of the system components.

Such records are invaluable for insurance and calculating corporate net worth, as well as restoration purposes.

The systems also offer a range of reports and documents which can be automatically generated.

A bare-minimum list of these reports and documents would include the following:

* complete wiring diagrams,

* schematics,

* cable routes,

* bills of materials,

* connection lists,

* maintenance history,

* and work orders.