Disaster Recovery Facilities

For many organisations, the costs to setup and own a disaster recovery site would be prohibitive, especially considering the site would be providing protection for what may be a one in 15 year event.

Not withstanding the above, organisations still need a recovery capability. This is why solutions such as outsourcing from a specialist disaster recovery provider are so important.

Standby, in association with a business partner, operates a professional Disaster Recovery Facility from its Dunedin site. Standby provides the consultancy services, support and advice together with the office space and facilities, while our business partner supplies the top of the line hardware. By utilising this partnership relationship, Standby can provide access to a wide variety of the latest hardware and facilities at our Dunedin site or through our partnership to multiple sites in Auckland, Sydney, and Melbourne. There are few providers who can offer a similar service.

To access these facilities and hardware, customers must have a formal contract with our business partner. This contract guarantees access to hardware configured specifically to the customer's requirements and ensures delivery within a set timeframe. On declaration of a disaster the customer can either activate the hardware at the disaster recovery site or alternatively have the hardware delivered directly to their home site.

Testing

Following a disaster it is critical that a IT Disaster Recovery Plan will actually work. By having a formal contract for hardware backup any concerns can be alleviated as customers can come onsite and test their plan. These tests enable customers to fine tune their plans and test their backup media to make sure they actually do work. Testing also gives customers the opportunity to practice and familiarise themselves with their disaster recovery plans and system rebuilds and allows them to improve and/or update their system documentation. With network connectivity, customers often link into their own internal networks and can operate their systems from the recovery site

Both Standby and our business partner can provide technical expertise to assist clients in carrying out these tests and documenting the recovery steps into IT disaster recovery plans.

Hardware

As computer technology changes, the hardware configurations of equipment housed on Standby's site is constantly changing to meeting client's requirements. Typical of the equipment held onsite is:

• IBM AS/400 820 iSeries models with a variety of CPW capacity and LPAR ability. There are also several small models available

• IBM pSeries Model 570,
  Configuration: 8 Processors (Power 5 processor 1.9 GHz), 32 Gigabyte of Memory, 12 x 73 Gigabyte Internal Disks

• IBM DS4700 Storage Array with 16 x 146 Gigabyte Disks expandable to 124 Disk units

• New 16 Port Fabric Switch
• RS/6000 - various models including two pSeries 630 4-Way Processor machines and a S7A with 4-Way processor.
• Intel based servers - a wide variety of machines to choose from including a number with multiple processors.

A number of new Intel Servers have been added to sites machine pool to increase the capability for both individual server recovery and or Virtualised machine recovery.

Work Station Recovery

It has been found that organisations who have experienced disasters that temporary office space and facilities for key personnel is often as critical as the computer systems themselves. As part of the recovery site hosting service Standby provides, customers have access to fully furnished office space as well as telecommunications connectivity, fax, printers, tea and coffee making facilities and meeting rooms etc.

Pricing

All pricing for Standby's Disaster Recovery Hosting Service is based on the customer's requirements. As it is unlikely no two customers will the same requirements, Standby tailors our service to meet each customer's individual needs. Factors that influence our price include the size of the hardware required, processor speed, DASD requirements, tape units and any other special cards etc.

If you would like for information on these services, please contact us.