This week I will be....

[vwdan]

HP container solution is a PR stunt. There is a reason for using DC to host your IT infrastructure - resilience, connectivity, security, etc. all of them are lacking in the truck solution. Normally a DR site contains the most important portion of the company data, how do you secure that in a truck sitting in a parking lot? How do you refresh it without being connected to a fast broadband? In the event of disaster how do you consume the data without fast broadband? I can't see a single advantage of such solution over a DR site in a DC on the other side of the planet. Maybe i'm missing something.

You're missing that not everything is "data based", for a start. I'm not saying PC's DR solution is a good one - but how can we possibly comment without knowing what it's got to achieve and what they have to work with?

And why do you assume we need "fast broadband" to do everything? Most IT functions worked fine for a long time without fast internet - it's obviously not optimal, but that's all part of the risk/reward balance.

[darmstadt]

I've seen these at various events, IBM, Sun and HP, but never in action. The only DR I've been involved in with a truck was during the hurricanes in Florida where the main server was put into the back of a pickup and riven out of the area to somewhere safe

Sungard DR truck

IBM DR truck

The best DR exercise I was involved in took the following steps:

- backup system to tape
- draw straws to see who would perform the DR
- pack tapes into bag
- take taxi to Frankfurt airport
- take plane to Rome
- take taxi to Frascati
- hand tapes over to remote site personal
- sit in cafe on beachside drinking wine while they brought up the DR system

I also setup the DR system for Porsche, which was...interesting. I've been involved in a number of companies DR plans and it still amazes me how many don't have either a real DR plan in existence or if they do, then they haven't implemented it fully, ever.