Thank you for the WakeUp Call

I am on the Gulf Coast of Fl and we were very worried about hurricane Floyd 
and other storms after that.  Now there is another possible hurricane off 
Cuba.  Peters' comments on what happened in SC, NC and NJ made all of us, 
wake up!  We have multiple 400s and like all people tend to get complacent 
when it comes to DR planning.  Yes, we had a plan before!  But after reading 
Peter's comments about the 100s of companies that had to go to hot site, it 
made us stop and think.  He was 100% correct when he talked about DR 
planning.  10 months before Floyd we did an option 21 and took off to the 
hotsite.  Everyone knew when the hotsite test was.  We believed that an 
option 21 was the best method of saving for a test.  What did the restore of 
option 21 prove?   It only proved that an option 21 will work with the 
exception of the file dependencies  because we read the backup and recovery 
guide.  But nothing else in the plan was tested.  Did it prove that if a 
disaster were to happen, would we be able to recover in time and correctly?  
NO!!!!!!  It did NOT really test our DR plan at all, it just tested restoring 
from an option 21!!!  However, Peter pointed out and rather dramatically that 
we were all WET in our thinking.  He is correct!  How often does a disaster 
happen after an option 21,  99.9999% never.  Our next test a week ago was 
announced, the only one knowing that we are going to a hotsite was the 
hotsite itself and the company president.  We went to the test totally 
UNANNOUNCED to my staff and we did NOT be just do an option 21.  The test 
took place in the middle of the week so test included our daily saves also.  
This way we gave the DR plan a real test.  And guess what, we found holes in 
the plan that we never new were there.  Now we made changes to our plan based 
on those holes that were found and just in time for this next Hurricane off 
the Keys.

When you get a chance, read the article in Midrange  systems on 9/30/99 
dealing with DR planning.  This goes along with what he was saying.  THANK 
YOU Peter  O'Connor for helping our company.

One of the guys here first showed me Peter's comment.  My ops manager and I 
have been reading some of the responses to Peter's original mail before 
Common.  I think a lot of you are missing the point of this news group.  That 
is to LEARN.  If you wanted to know something about building a house, would 
you want suggestions from a French teacher?  No, you would want suggestions 
from a contractor, carpenter.  Peter might be in the software business and 
his web site might have information on DR and I do not care.  I do care that 
he is willing to give away free information.  I firmly believe that Peter was 
NOT trying to sell his software or his web site.  He never mentioned his 
software what or what his business does.  He only gave up good 
information!!!!  If we cannot take suggestions from people that have a 
particular expertise,  we are in trouble.  If we cannot use the wisdom of 
some then we cannot let Bob Cozi have anything to say about RPGIII since he 
is in that business; Al, Dean, and Bruce cannot say anything on the 400 since 
they are in the consulting business.  And God forbid if Al ever mentions 
TAATools, we will have to condemn him to take a cold shower.  My feeling is 
that if a person can give us constructive information and guidance for FREE, 
we should take it.  My 2nd DR test proved more valuable because of Peter's 
comments.

Larry T. Howell
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