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| Preparing for Imminent Disaster by Annette Dow, Director, Binary Resource The 21st century has already thrown up a series of catastrophic incidents that have had a worldwide impact. The Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and, closer to home, the London bombings and Avian flu – have each played a devastating part in sparking global panic. Combining natural disasters, terrorist threats and pandemics with the everyday threats to technological infrastructures, such as identity theft, worms, viruses and suspicious mail, means that companies are being forced to look into Continuation of Operations Planning (COOP) for their technology operations with increasing urgency. COOP is part of a broader disaster preparedness planning process, which serves to ensure operational continuity during a disaster or, failing that, to ensure continuity resumes as quickly as possible thereafter. Most companies that suffer a significant data loss during a major incident are likely to be out of business within two years of the event. As a result, many organisations are taking vital preventative steps to ensure the survival of their business. COOP has thus advanced considerably in recent years. According to the Business Continuity Institute, (a global research provider), some 80% of worldwide organisations with a robust continuity plan are likely to survive a major business discontinuity event. A variety of approaches now help organisations protect their data, applications and communications infrastructure. These include data back up and replication in remote locations, deployment of information management software, use of cloning applications to create Images of PCs for subsequent installation on alternative hardware platforms, and contracting with third parties to provide fixed or mobile IT facilities in the event an agency's offices become inaccessible. But even a company that is fully prepared and has taken these measures to protect its business against all threats could still be rendered vulnerable to hours, days, or in some cases weeks, of inoperability in the wake of a major incident. Here is why… In most circumstances, a company's recently created Image files will be replicated at a remote location. However, few of the Images are likely to readily port to new workstations because of incompatibilities between the hardware from which the Images were cloned and the third-party hardware in a mobile IT facility to which the Images will be deployed. IT managers will subsequently need at least six hours before any of the PCs are formatted, and probably another two or three days before even half of them can be in service as each machine will require a technician to complete post-deployment configuration to enable the machine to become operational given the probable hardware and driver variations. Two or three days, or in many cases, even slight inoperability can prove fatal for many businesses. In the UK, the health and education sectors are adopting a fresh approach towards COOP. This can be seen at institutions such as UCL and Homefirst NHS trust where they have installed the Universal Imaging Utility (UIU) - developed by Big Bang LLC and distributed worldwide by Binary Resource International. Also used widely by the US Government, this innovation ensures that a master Image of any Windows business-class PC or Laptop created using any industry-standard cloning application, such as Ghost, will deploy to any business-class PC, regardless of make, model, processor, or configuration – in short, UIU creates a Universal Image. One of the key components within the UIU, critical to the ability to create that truly "universal" Image, is the driver database. It contains drivers for more than 35,000 hardware components from virtually every systems integrator and OEM. This enables the IT Administrator to create and manage just one, single Image file for all the machines in their environment rather than the multiple Images currently needed for each machine configuration when using the cloning solution alone. In the COOP situation, the deployment of that Universal Image will ensure that, regardless of the configuration of the destination machine, the Image is going to work and all machines could be up and running within as little as thirty minutes. In the modern world, nobody can predict how or when a major incident will occur and the disturbing reality is that it is out of our hands. Nonetheless, forward-thinking organisations must prepare themselves for any eventuality through a very carefully considered Continuation of Operation Plan. IT directors and CIOs must have the foresight to consider any potential outcome and investing in systems management tools, such as UIU, is a step in the right direction for securing a brighter future for any company. write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Computing News :: home page |