Disaster Recovery Journal - Summer 2001 Issue- News Briefs

IBM enhances continuity options for Sun Microsystems®
IBM Business Continuity and Recovery Services recently acquired 2 Terabytes of additional dedicated Sun disk to strengthen it's Sun recovery portfolio and meet demand generated by customers' expanding ERP requirements.
With this additional capacity, IBM's continuity options for Sun Microsystems include:

IBM facilities equipped with the latest Sun technology - from Sun's Sparc Station up through Enterprise 10000 - Sun's largest server.
Sun Professional Services onsite to assist customers' recovery effort
Proven test methodology that incorporates current Sun technologies
Sun-certified staff available 24X7
Sun Platinum Service - highest level of SUN service to support customers' uptime needs

IBM highly skilled and dedicated operational and technology personnel Solutions designed to meet customers' individual recovery time objectives

IBM can provide the Sun Microsystems hardware and network connectivity options you need to help keep your business continuously available. Combine Sun hardware, IBM's highly skilled personnel and 24x7 on-site Sun staff support and you have an excellent combination for both testing your business continuity plan and rebounding from an unplanned outage. In fact, IBM can support just about any hardware platform to help meet your recovery needs! Learn more at:
http://www-1.ibm.com/services/continuity/recover1.nsf/index/Sun

PERM-A-STORE ® DEVELOPS NEW TURTLE OVER PACK BOX AT THE REQUEST OF IBM®

Customized for 3590 extended life cartridges, this protective packaging system reduces drop impact by more than 900 g’s of force
WICHITA, KS – July 9, 2001 – Perm-A-Store, developer of the Turtle brand of computer media cases, today announced the immediate availability of its new Turtle Over Pack Box. Now shipping, this additional media protection product was developed and quickly brought to market at the request of IBM. The leading computer corporation approached Perm-A-Store with their need for a safer and more reliable method for transporting its highly sensitive, extended-length 3590 tape cartridges.
Within two months of IBM’s initial request, Perm-A-Store designed, developed and began shipping this new protective packaging system. The new Over Pack product fits into the existing Turtle cases and, if dropped, limits the amount of damaging g-forces transmitted to cartridges. During IBM verified drop tests, 3590 tape cartridges contained within a Turtle case, were placed in the Over Pack Box. Test results showed that without the Over Pack system, tapes were subjected to more than 1,000 g’s of force. However, when the Turtle case was protected within the Over Pack Box, tapes were exposed to less than 100 g’s.
The increased number of tracks and extended length of the 3590 cartridges make proper handling protocol critically important. Cartridge orientation is equally as critical. Cartridges must be stored and transported in a vertical position to keep tape properly spooled inside. An improperly oriented tape exposed to a high impact could cause damage to the tape edge – thus losing large amounts of critical data. All Turtle cases by Perm-A-Store are designed to maintain the tape upright.
"Our reputation for offering the best methods and products for transporting vital backup tapes served us well," said David Leben, Perm-A-Store’s president. "When IBM needed a solution, we were the only company they turned to. This new transportation method takes the Turtle’s benefits to an even higher level."
The TUR10ECC and TUR20ECC are 10-capacity and 20-capacity 3590 cartridge Over Packs, designed to hold the Turtle cases. Both models have two-inch, polyethylene panel end caps. Cartridges are securely held in place without coming in contact with the foam. The high-density polyethylene (HDPE) Turtle case is placed inside a specially designed, corrugated carton.

IBM alliance with RISC Control provides breakthrough technology for recovery services
IBM alliance with RISC Control provides breakthrough technology for recovery services, shortening disaster recovery up to 50% for UNIX** and AIX* customers. Our alliance with RISC Control provides customers with a comprehensive business continuity and recovery solution for the smallest RS/6000* system to the Scalable Parallel SP/6000* super computer. RISC Control's Rapid Recovery Methodology accelerates the ability to restore critical business operations by using a profiling technique that captures vital system configuration data. Using intelligent-agent technology, this data is profiled and
kept current on a secure server. At a moment's notice, the profile can be burned onto dedicated equipment, so you can recover in a fraction of the normal time. What's the cost to your business of each production hour lost after an outage? How quickly can your team recover a multimillion dollar ERP application that took months to design and implement? IBM Business Continuity and Recovery Services can help. Learn more at: http://isource.ibm.com/cgi-bin/goto?on=usa5hw0701

Determining a Backup Strategy – amerivault corp.
Organizing your backups into different groups with different backup schedules can help reduce your costs considerably. MP3 files are a good example of storing unnecessary files and expanding backup windows. You can begin by grouping your file data by type and access. The data type identifies data by purpose, while data access identifies data by usage and rate of change. Data type involves organizing the data by Operating System, Operating System (OS) Data, Applications and User Data. Data access identifies the data’s usage and change rate. For some data, there might not be any modification because the data is archive data. For other data, there might be low, medium or high change. This process will help you determine how often your data should be backed up and how long it should be stored.
The following questions should be asked:
* Does the data support a critical business function?
* Does the data support a legal or auditing concern?
* Is the data sensitive?
* Is the data difficult or expensive to reproduce?
This will help determine how often to backup and how long to store the data in question. For example, data that supports a critical business function should be copied off-site on a regular basis and should have a brief retention period because of its high rate of change. Data that supports a legal or auditing concern should also be copied off-site on a somewhat regular basis; however, it should have a long or permanent retention period because of its nature. Sensitive data, such as patents or trade secrets, should be copied off-site on a fairly regular basis and should be permanently archived. Data, such as historical information, that is difficult or expensive to reproduce should be copied off-site once and should be permanently archived.
Constructing monthly, weekly and daily backup schedules for backup files based on their sensitivity and frequency of change is equally important. There will be times when an administrator will need a file restored to a state other than the last backup. In these instances, saving multiple generations of a backup can be very important. Only perform backups of the operating system after the upgraded or changes are made to its configuration. A vaulting service provider like amerivault corp. should save a single copy of system data by the administrator setting the retention period to zero and the number of generations to one. Remember, out-dated backups of the operating system are not of much value at restoration time. For more information on offsite, online backup and recovery services, please visit www.amerivault.com. or http://www.electronicvaulting.com/.

BELFOR Outperforms in the Aftermath of the Great Houston Flood of 2001
HOUSTON, TX – June 25, 2001 Tropical Storm Allison arrived with fury as Houston received almost 36 inches of rain causing widespread damage in the downtown metropolitan area. In the wake of such disaster, BELFOR, who specializes in property restoration for large-loss commercial damages, quickly arrived on the scene and provided relief to a multitude of businesses affected by the torrential rain.
The downtown area was hit hardest as tremendous amounts of water surged into Houston’s underground. Below the majestic buildings that tower above the city is an underground world of, not only parking garages and basements, but also mechanical operations facilities, offices, theaters and even shopping centers. This underground world quickly became flooded with rainwater. Theresa Williams, BELFOR’s vice president of sales and marketing, who has assisted after hurricanes Andrew and Georges, the North Ridge earthquake and the Midwest flood, commented that this is, by far, the most extensive damage in a concentrated commercial area that she has ever seen.
Working with over 500 employees on over 60 projects in all parts of Houston, BELFOR has assembled its largest catastrophe crew. The logistics of such an operation are staggering, considering the complete range of services offered by BELFOR. Not only is BELFOR able to respond immediately to the cleaning and dehumidification needs after a flood, but also provides: reconstruction services, mold remediation, contents restoration, structural decontamination, electronic and machinery restoration, construction defect repair, book and document reclamation, and fire restoration services.
BELFOR has been able to quickly respond to locations such as Alley Theater, a performance hall, where two basement levels were filled with water, destroying the basement stage, the electrical system, the laundry facility, the costumes storage, and the props workshop. Additional restoration locations include Jones Hall, home of the Houston Symphony, which received extensive water damage to the musical library and instruments, and Shell 2 Plaza where an entire underground shopping center was devastated. Farther east, at Montgomery Machine, four feet of water flooded the electrical electronics control cabinets which supply power and control the activities of all machinery in the facility. In Houston’s prestigious medical center area, water damage affected not only facility structures, but also irreplaceable medical records. BELFOR is providing document reclamation service to salvage the water-logged records and return them to hospitals in a working condition.
For more information, contact: Allison Dickerson at (337) 233-1515.

EMC / CNT Solution Is First to Leverage Fibre Channel Over IP
LAS VEGAS, NV - Building on an existing relationship, EMC Corporation has announced the world’s first implementation of true data mirroring that combines the ubiquity of the Internet Protocol (IP) and the scalable performance of the widely deployed Fibre Channel storage networking transport, to deliver new levels of data consolidation, content distribution and core-to-edge collaboration.
The new solution, EMC Fibre Channel Symmetrix Remote Data Facility for Internet Protocol (SRDF-FC-IP), employs EMC’s market-leading SRDF data replication software and CNT’s UltraNet storage networking solutions. SRDF-FC-IP enables the secure, automatic, wide area mirroring of files, databases and applications between multiple EMC Symmetrix enterprise storage systems over private IP networks. It leverages customers’ widely deployed, yet frequently underutilized private IP-based networks, and Fibre Channel, the standard in networked storage connectivity.
SRDF-FC-IP builds on an existing EMC/CNT solution for mainframe-based ESCON environments. SRDF-FC-IP enables customers to move huge data volumes between EMC Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems and a CNT UltraNet device, which converts the data transport format for movement over the IP network. The new solution is ideally suited for applications requiring localized processing, speedy information access and remote data replication. The standards-based Fibre Channel network protocol delivers the reliability, responsiveness, scalability, high-throughput and low-latency needed to meet the broad range of market and technology requirements. For more information, visit www.cnt.com.

FedEx Custom Critical Opens ExpressCenter
AKRON, OH - FedEx Custom Critical, North America’s largest time-specific, critical-shipment carrier, has opened an ExpressCenter in Columbus, Ind., to provide faster pickup service for businesses in that community. The ExpressCenter is a location where trucks are available for dispatch. Five sizes of trucks are available to meet customers’ expedited shipping needs: minivans, cargo vans, 12-foot and 20-foot straight trucks and tractor-trailers.
The new ExpressCenter offers pickup by straight trucks and tractor-trailers in less than 90 minutes for customers located within a 25-mile radius of Columbus and in less than two hours within a 26- to 50-mile radius. Response time is even faster for cargo vans and minivans. For more information, visit www.fedexcustomcritical.com.

Mail-Gard Concepts Inc. Partners With Davlin Business Systems Inc.
WARMINSTER, PA - Mail-Gard Concepts Inc., the United States’ leading provider of print-to-mail disaster recovery solutions, and Davlin Business Systems, Inc., a leading Canadian mailing systems integrator, have announced a partnership to bring print-to-mail disaster recovery solutions to the Canadian market. “Mail-Gard Canada” will be headquartered at Davlin’s Markham, Ontario headquarters, which will include space and equipment dedicated solely to print-to-mail disaster recovery services.
The partnership will allow both companies to offer disaster recovery solutions to customers who have operations in either the United States or Canada or for those companies with operations in both. For additional information, contact Gerald A. Montella, Mail-Gard’s Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, at (215) 956-1541 or jmontella@ccgroupnet.com. In Canada, contact Mail-Gard Canada’s David Harris at (905) 475-3900 or dharris@davlinsystems.com.

Mail-Gard Concepts and Opserver Join Forces to Establish On-Demand DR™
IVYLAND, PA - Mail-Gard Concepts, Inc., the leading provider of print-to-mail disaster recovery solutions, has selected FlexServer Enterprise™ from Opserver, Inc., the leader in output management technologies, as the core of its new On-Demand DR services. On-Demand DR provides a previously unavailable level of protection and control to enable managers to take full control of critical print-to-mail operations, whether the application is being processed in their shop or at the Mail-Gard recovery facility, in a full disaster situation or whenever a service-level commitment is in jeopardy. On-Demand DR is able to reduce recovery time by facilitating the storage of printer resources at the remote Mail-Gard recovery facility, while also enabling data to be concurrently copied to both the production-print and recovery-print queues.
For additional information, contact Gerald A. Montella, Mail-Gard’s Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, at (215) 956-1541 or jmontella@ccgroupnet.com.

NSI Software Announces Business Continuity Support for IBM eServer xSeries
HOBOKEN, NJ - NSI Software, a leading provider of patented, award-winning business continuance solutions, has announced that its Double-Take software solution will provide business continuity support, including high availability and disaster recovery capabilities, for IBM’s new high-end xSeries, 4-way and 8-way Intel, -based servers. Double-Take is the first business continuance solution to meet the stringent requirements of IBM’s Datacenter Solutions Platform by completing IBM’s Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter testing.
The IBM Datacenter Solutions Program is a comprehensive set of product and service offerings designed to deliver true enterprise computing solutions based on the Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server operating system to those customers demanding greater processing requirements, greater scalability and the highest levels of uptime for their mission-critical environments. In addition, Double-Take has also received validation and registration as ServerProven, and ClusterProven, on IBM’s Netfinity, server platforms. For more information, visit www.nsisoftware.com.

Strohl Systems Adds Education Seminars to Its Online Training Offerings
Strohl Systems recently announced an expanded online curriculum, which now provides business continuity planning (BCP) education seminars online. Topics include hotsite negotiation, conducting a business impact analysis (BIA), and plan maintenance and exercising. Last September Strohl Systems introduced online product training, with the first classes beginning in December. Since then, the demand and interest for this training format has increased.
Vice President Pat Moore, who heads Strohl Systems’ Education Division, hosts the online education sessions. In addition to her online offerings, Moore provides customized, in-house training workshops and seminars to audiences of all levels from planners to government in all areas of accountability; and from security and safety to supply chain management. For more information concerning hotsite-negotiation consulting services, call Turley at 800-634-2016, ext. 380. To learn more about online education seminars, call Moore at 800-634-2016, ext. 306.

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