Fire In the Computer Room, What Now?

Who you gonna call?

Data Processing disasters can be caused by fires, earthquakes, terrorism, or just plain failures of hardware or software. Most modern organizations could not survive more than a few days without their computer systems and the precious data they hold. Yet few businesses have a complete, up-to-date disaster recovery plan.

In this compact volume, an international team of IBM experts share their combined decades of experience in simple, everyday terms. You will learn to assess your risks and requirements so you can implement and maintain a recovery solution that suits your needs.

You'll learn the basics in six steps:

• Analyze your organization's needs, balancing risk and costs
• Translate those needs into specific data processing requirements
• Design a recovery plan that will get your critical systems running right away
• Choose the proper products to fit your plan
• Roll out your backup and recovery solution
• Keep it current through maintenance and testing

These key strategies work with all types of hardware and software platforms, and are applicable to organizations of many types and sizes. The emphasis on practical solutions tailored to your business make Fire In the Computer Room a perfect book for managers in all fields, as well as the data processing professionals who support them.

• Introduction
• Determine What the Business Requires
• Why Analyze the Requirements?
• Analyze the Risk of a Disaster
• Why Not Take the Risk
• Analyze the Business Processes
• Determine the Data Processing Requirements
• Map the Business Requirements to the Applications
• Application Inventory
• Systems Management Processes
• Service Level Agreements for DR
• Reach a Consensus
• Make Trade-offs during Requirements Gathering
• Design the Backup/Recovery Solution
• Scope of the Recovery
• Strategy for Testing
• Data Backup and Recovery Processes
• Manage and Operate the Alternate Site
• Description of the Recovery Configuration
• Application Programming Considerations
• Decision Criteria
• Select Products to Match the Design
• Product Selection
• Consider Product Quality
• What Does the Backup/Recovery Solution Cost?
• Develop a Detailed Design
• Implement the Backup/Recovery Solution
• Set Up the Alternate Recovery Facility
• Develop Disaster Recovery Procedures
• Develop the Recovery Plan
• Documentation
• Keep the Solution Up-to-Date
• Maintenance
• Audit the Plan
• Test the Plan
• Appendix A: System/390 Disaster Recovery Products
• Enterprise System Connection (ESCON)
• 3990 Model 006 Remote Copy
• CMOS Processors (IBM 9672)
• Parallel Sysplex
• RRDF
• Data Facilities Storage Management System/MVS (DFSMS/MVS)
• ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager (ADSM)
• Appendix B: Disaster Recovery Tiers — SHARE 78 Definition
• Appendix C: Special Notices
• Appendix D: Related Publications
• International Technical Support Organization Publications
• How To Get ITSO Redbooks

A good book with a focus on IBM mainframes, which shouldn't come as a surprise considering where the authors are coming from.