Ensure business continuity

IT directors should be sending staff for regular updates and simulation exercises to ensure business continuity and recovery in the event of disaster. “You can think you understand how your systems will interact, but it’s never the same in a real disaster situation,” says Jim Dunkley, managing director of Shipnall, Shropshire-based third party training firm Host. “When was the last time you proved your system? Did it work? Here, anything that can go wrong, we can make go wrong – and you’re far safer if you have someone who’s seen it and done it.” He recommends that manufacturers verify their failover and fail-back systems monthly, or at least quarterly, but adds that deep refresh training should be at least every two years. “Even system administrators, who are working with the processes day in day out, can have problems when it comes to fail-back. We can teach mirroring and snapshots on anything --- IBM mainframes, blade servers, PCs, HP and Sun equipment, Solaris, AIX, multiple vendors.” And at around £2,000 for a high end, five day course, and £900 for three days on data replication, it looks sensible.