Disaster recovery kits

[russdev]

I wanted to move the discussion on from Tony recent posts as for various reasons I have been thinking about the Kit at work ( See Disaster recovery: so basic, so difficult - Community - ComputerworldUK if want to know why I was thinking about it.. shameless plug over)

Anyway wondered what is in your DR kits to see if missing anything?

Russ

[russdev]

this a bump

Ok a starter for 10..


OS CDs
Copy of Licences
Restore Process
Backup Tape

Russ

[j17sparky]

1 Knowledgable professional
1 Laptop with DVD-R
1 Access to google/MS/debian

[danrhodes]

Copious amounts of Black Coffee and anything containint caffeine.

[Domino]

Passport and overnight kit in my desk drawer

[jamesreedersmith]

Pre agreed priority list or servers/serices to get back up and running so everyone knows what will be worked on and in what order.

[maniac]

• 1 set of OS installation CDs + license keys
• 1 Portable HDD with images of all our major servers on
• Backup Tapes
• Media for Backup Exec including licenses
• Driver CDs for servers
• Detailed sheet stating how the servers are currently setup, e.g the partition sizes, share names, security settings, what services are installed on each server and any customisations and tweeks we've had to make to them over their lifetime (when we remember to record the information)
• Flow chart showing the restore process for each server and a rough order of processes.

Most of this is in a fireproof box in our office and there's a duplicate in the main school safe (apart from the backup tape of course) plus an encrypted memorystick with most of the above on in electronic format that I keep at home just in case - nothing confidential on it, just the OS installation media, driver CDs, backup exec etc. on there as disk images and all the documentation.

It's not all been fully tested, but I can't think of how I could be more comprehensive.

Mike.

[Number6]

A handy list of staff to blame for the disaster occurring in the first place, cross-referenced by name / area of inexpertise.

Another list of who destroyed, or rendered inoperable the backups.

[pete]

• Contact details for helpful suppliers with 30-day credit agreements in place.
• Contact details for site staff, SMT, PFY, myself, LEA, utilities suppliers.
• Location of a known good borrowable LT02 tape drive.
• Access methods for tapes from offsite backup (or backup server if the onsite backup location survived - separate building without jumpy fire paths)
• Encryption keys for aforementioned tapes
• Hard drive containing .isos for 2003, Debian, SW, Xenserver and .wims for images, application shares and copy of the IT Wiki.
• Mobile phone, toolkit, multitools, torches.
• Spare 2.5" laptop hard disks (teacher thinkpads can run Xenserver with a bit of tweaking, so I can kludge together access to SIMS and other essentials).
• Cash (mainly for takeaways).
• Stack of blank CDs
• Decent coffee

[danrhodes]

• Cash (mainly for takeaways).
• Decent coffee

Not last xmas but the one before one of our schools got torched, we went through so many pizzas in the rebuild process.

[russdev]

The one thing I mentioned in my post on CWUK was how do we communicate with staff etc while recovery is going on.

One area we often do not think about is the human element:

Who keeps the staff up to date with progress?
How will you communicate with staff if the computer systems are down?
While the problem is fixed is there someone who can go regularly to staff just to reassure them and keep them informed?

What process do people have in place for that?

Russ

[danrhodes]

The one thing I mentioned in my post on CWUK was how do we communicate with staff etc while recovery is going on.



What process do people have in place for that?

Russ

We have in place I think a mobile phone plan that kicks into action with the disaster plan, where certain members of staff are allcated phones and are kept up to date via phone or txt.

[nephilim]

Complete set of OS disks and keys
5x External HDDs with relevant backups for redundancies.
8x External HDDs with relevant images (be it for office, teaching, SLG, curriculum, servers etc)
Tool kits
10x Spare equipment (HDDs, gfx cards etc)
£50 in petty cash to pay for takeaway whilst working late over several nights

[pete]

This is unofficial, but how it usually works when something (lightning, flood, power explosions) goes pearshaped:

1) DH with oversight for IT proactively checks in for updates and informs others. He runs interference for us so we're fixing rather than responding to user queries.
2) Paper phone lists are available onsite and offsite. We all have mobiles.
3) See 1)

[danrhodes]

Yeah something like that, keeps us techs doing what were best at and other staff can handle the info requests.

You could very easily just set up an online news page that people can access from home or internet enabled devices ie phones.

D