RE: Pricing for hot backup sites

["Dan Bale" <dbale@xxxxxxxxx>]

Carl,

I would suggest that turning yourself into a hot site backup provider may be
more of a can of worms than you might realize.  Frankly, the liability
aspects of this would scare me off.  But you know your client & your
situation, and I don't.

Roll your own?  vs. spending $20k on a prepackaged solution?  vs. spending
$???/month on a hotsite provider?  If you & your client decide to make you
the hot site, I can't see how you could spend less than $20k in terms of
your own time/salaries to roll your own.

Of course, this depends on the level of availability your client needs.  How
soon *MUST* they be back up and running when their 400 ditches in the middle
of their busiest period?  One company I knew of claimed that, after four
hours of unplanned downtime in their busy season, they'd be in a
catastrophic situation.  I suspect most non-IT managers don't realize how
dependent their businesses are on their information systems.

Is your client using a totally mirrored disks?  A big UPS?  Journaling?
These and other 400 features can go a long way in ensuring system
availability and quick recovery.

On a recovery scheme that relies on tape backup:  Can the client live with
the problems when the 400 dies at 4 p.m., after a full day of processing
since the last nightly backup?

Don't know if you've covered all these questions.  I think these are
probably just the tip of the iceberg.  I would be interested in knowing what
becomes of this.

- Dan Bale
(I am *NOT* "Dale"
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200105/msg00281.html )