Moore Schools - A Case of Disaster Recovery Gone Right by Jay Livens

Like most people, I watched the tragic weather related events in the Midwest with great sadness. It is terrible to see the loss of life and property that occurs with massive tornados and my heart goes out to all affected. As a frequent blogger on data protection, scenarios like those in Oklahoma remind me about the criticality of disaster recovery (DR). Now, of course, IT related issues pale in comparison to the larger tragedy, but as Oklahoma rebuilds, the IT teams in affected areas must begin the process of recovering IT operations as well. In this post, I will highlight an example of a particularly noteworthy recovery.

The tornado in Moore, Oklahoma was an EF5 which means winds greater than 200 MPH and significant devastation. One of the buildings destroyed was Moore School's data center. You can see a picture of what it used to look like on Google Maps and below is an image of the site after the tornado.

(Image from GIS and notations are courtesy of Mark Kleine used with his permission.)

The white building was the school's data center and was a total loss. (The large building to the northwest is the administration building which emerged in better shape although according to Mark Kleine, it still suffered severe damage.) The destroyed building contained the school's primary IT infrastructure and you can easily imagine the challenge of recovering IT operations. However, amazingly, the school was able to get their primary systems online within 48 hours without missing a single payroll.

The key to Moore's recovery success was partnering with their vendors. After the storm, the school used front end loaders to retrieve their IT assets from the rubble. They gathered the IT hardware and transported it to a local partner location where the servers and storage were repaired and prepared to go back into operation. At the same time, local utilities and other vendors worked to ensure that the appropriate infrastructure (networking, Internet, etc ) was in place to support the temporary data center. The close partnership between Moore's IT team and its various vendors enabled the school recommence IT operations within 48 hours and resume normal payroll operations. Mark Kleine experienced this firsthand when his wife, who works for the school, was able to regain access to her information including email and education applications within 48 hours.

Key takeaways:

The Moore school district did a great job in recovering their operations in the face of a massive disaster. Their strategy of leveraging vendor partnerships was critical and has a significant implication to IT practitioners worldwide. As you are considering potential partners, ask yourself how would this partner respond if I had a large scale disaster event? If you have doubts about their commitment then you may want to reevaluate your partnership. Remember disasters can happen to anyone and it is critical to have a partner who is willing to respond with appropriate urgency.

The situation also raises a critical business continuity question. Moore's plan was to use existing assets for disaster recovery, and the strategy worked well for them. As an IT practitioner, you need to consider all DR options. An alternative (and more costly) strategy would be to have a complete DR site pre-populated with servers and software which could be activated in the time of disaster. This approach would provide the added protection of redundant hardware. If the primary site and all of its IT resources was completely destroyed, you could still resume operations. Both approaches stated above are valid options and the choice of which one to use depends on your risk tolerance, business requirements and budget.

In summary, the tornados in the Midwest were heartbreaking and the impact affected the entire country. While the importance of IT pales in comparison to the greater losses, it is still important to acknowledge the criticality of disaster recovery. Clearly Moore's IT department and their partners did an amazing job enabling the resumption of Moore's data center operations. Good job to all involved.

LINK:	http://blog.ironmountain.com/2013/service-lines/data-backup-and-recove...
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