Re: Backup Policy -- MIDRANGE-L

We have been having a very interesting discussion of what needs to be in the 
ideal ISO 9000 Backup Policy ... see Archives
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/index.htm

Along comes Mr Arquette's column "Dawn of the Living Dead Applications" page 
64 of April 23 E-Week describing how his employer's system went from a 
$400,000.00 investment, to garbage, in only 4 years ... and looks to me like 
this was paid for by the tax payers.

I think their MIS department needs to be
1. In our discussion.
2. In a time machine to apply what we learned, and do it 4 years ago, or 
perhaps 2 years ago when handwriting appeared on the wall.

In my opinion, their problem was not in predicting how technology and vendors 
might devolve relative to their system (everyone has that headache), but 
rather knowing how to backup everything as insurance against whatever might 
go wrong.

Example of hardware backup ... we recently had a telecommunications upgrade 
replacing a particular modem model on a point to point line ... we had 3 
modems to trade in, one almost never used ... why 3 since it was point to 
point?

Well, if a modem on either end of our line went down, our people could get 
replacement installed in a matter of hours, even if modem stored at the end 
that did not go down.

Tech Support on the modem promised 48 turn around with their depot, but we 
are in the boonies, which means that stuff promised 48 hours for big cities 
translates to 2 weeks for us.

Here is an example of what can happen if your backup policy does not include 
critical hardware.

A friend told me about the burglary of the doctor's office where she worked 
... someone went off with all of their PCs, which were networked.  No 
problem, they thought.

1) Our insurance will replace all hardware.
2) We have complete off-site backups of data & software (that ride home with 
people on a daily basis).
3) We will have to send some kind of apologetic letter out to all our 
customers to alert them that their confidential medical records are now in 
the hands of unknown criminals, so if they get some suspicous contacts, they 
will know the local police person to contact regarding this case.

Then they found out their backup system was not manufactured any more & there 
was no such thing as equipment that could read their tapes.

The lesson from this is that you need to stay in touch with what's going 
obsolete that your enterprise depends upon, and make sure you have adequate 
backups, including off-site hardware.

Our IBM hardware partners maintain a working copy of each of several antique 
IBM computer systems, that IBM officially took off the market over 10 years 
ago.  We found out about this when asking about changes in media backups ... 
we no longer use 8" diskettes, but we had backups going back 10 years in case 
of some government audit of our records ... we would be able, theoretically, 
to access the data on a former software system, whose license is no longer 
valid, on a computer system we no longer have, through a combination of using 
our IBM partner's equipment, with system date back dated to the vintage of 
the backups.

Fortunately we have never had an audit that required this plan to be tested.
I do not have a lot of faith that the 10 year old diskettes have been 
continuously stored in the correct temperature controlled conditions for long 
life.

So the moral of my latest tales or rule of thumb is to understand the life 
span of systems & vendors your business runs on.  Research Vendor & Support.  
Vendors can die out & their products be supported for decades, but you need 
to line this up in advance with vendors that you have a lot of confidence 
will not also disappear.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)


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