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Planning for Survivable Networks
Priscilla Oppenheimer writes "Annlee A. Hines' book Planning for Survivable Networks, is quite a page-turner. Yes, that's surprising for a technical book, but I found it to be true. I was fascinated by the stories of real companies (Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street Journal, and others) that survived the 9/11 attack and resumed business quickly. There are also stories from other disasters, both man-made and natural, and information on companies that were not able to quickly resume business. The author summarizes the stories with explanations of what went right and what went wrong, with advice on developing your own disaster recovery plan." Read on for the rest of her review.
Planning for Survivable Networks
author
Annlee A. Hines
pages
320
publisher
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
rating
10
reviewer
Priscilla Oppenheimer
ISBN
047123284X
summary
Designing networks that can recover from natural and unnatural disasters
As Hines explains, Lehman Brothers had headquarters in Tower 1, as well as in 1,2,3 World Financial Center (across the street from the WTC towers). Lehman moved to a backup recovery location and performed cash-management functions the same day as the attack. The company was online trading fixed-income securities by the next day. They had 400 traders online when the NYSE reopened Monday, 9/17.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published the story of its own recovery and Hines used that as source material for her book. WSJ had an extensive disaster recovery plan, based on lessons learned in the 1990 power blackouts in New York. After the blackouts and a subsequent fire in the emergency generator room, WSJ decided that it would never again depend on just one location being operational. WSJ opened other offices that could perform some of the necessary tasks to bring out a paper. Geographical diversity of resources seems to be a key to success.
When the 9/11 terrorists attacked the buildings across the street from WSJ's main offices, senior managers called for an evacuation, knowing that they could still produce the paper. The Wall Street Journal managed to publish a full newspaper with eyewitness accounts of the tragedy the next day.
Hines' writing is easy to follow. Although she delves into some technical details, with the requisite IP and TCP header depictions that you will find in so many networking books, the book can easily be read by managers and business people. Planning for Survivable Networks has many factual tidbits about disasters of all sorts, and although these are interesting, the primary benefit of reading the book is to gain an understanding of the characteristics of companies that sustained business after a disaster compared to companies that did not.
As Hines says, the companies that survived disasters all had disaster recovery plans in place. The plans were activated by decisive managers, who also promptly got their people out of harm's way. (If people don't survive, it won't matter much if systems survive.) Another point she makes is that the managers had to be adaptable. Not everything went according to plan, and it shouldn't be expected that it will.
The book opens with the author being rocked by a terrorist-caused explosion herself. She wasn't present for the 9/11 attackers. Rather, the bombing she survived occurred at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, 20 years before. A retired Air Force officer, she has dealt with threats all over the world for many years. Her direct command and control experience has taught her many lesson, which she shares with the reader in Planning for Survivable Networks.
Probably one of the most useful chapters, Chapter 11, "The Business Case," offers advice on presenting to management a case for a network continuity plan. According to the back cover, Hines has taught economics at a community college, and I would say that experience helped her explain the many costs involved in having a disaster recovery plan, including fixed, variable, direct, and indirect costs. She also explains the expected value of having a plan and how to sell that to management.
I recommend this book as an informative discussion of how companies can ensure business and technology continuity in a world with hackers, terrorists, natural disasters, and human error. It's a practical book, but also a surprisingly uplifting book, considering its technical content. I truly enjoyed reading about the adaptable human spirit that enabled managers and workers to keep their businesses going after the 9/11 attacks.
As Hines explains, Lehman Brothers had headquarters in Tower 1, as well as in 1,2,3 World Financial Center (across the street from the WTC towers). Lehman moved to a backup recovery location and performed cash-management functions the same day as the attack. The company was online trading fixed-income securities by the next day. They had 400 traders online when the NYSE reopened Monday, 9/17.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published the story of its own recovery and Hines used that as source material for her book. WSJ had an extensive disaster recovery plan, based on lessons learned in the 1990 power blackouts in New York. After the blackouts and a subsequent fire in the emergency generator room, WSJ decided that it would never again depend on just one location being operational. WSJ opened other offices that could perform some of the necessary tasks to bring out a paper. Geographical diversity of resources seems to be a key to success.
When the 9/11 terrorists attacked the buildings across the street from WSJ's main offices, senior managers called for an evacuation, knowing that they could still produce the paper. The Wall Street Journal managed to publish a full newspaper with eyewitness accounts of the tragedy the next day.
Hines' writing is easy to follow. Although she delves into some technical details, with the requisite IP and TCP header depictions that you will find in so many networking books, the book can easily be read by managers and business people. Planning for Survivable Networks has many factual tidbits about disasters of all sorts, and although these are interesting, the primary benefit of reading the book is to gain an understanding of the characteristics of companies that sustained business after a disaster compared to companies that did not.
As Hines says, the companies that survived disasters all had disaster recovery plans in place. The plans were activated by decisive managers, who also promptly got their people out of harm's way. (If people don't survive, it won't matter much if systems survive.) Another point she makes is that the managers had to be adaptable. Not everything went according to plan, and it shouldn't be expected that it will.
The book opens with the author being rocked by a terrorist-caused explosion herself. She wasn't present for the 9/11 attackers. Rather, the bombing she survived occurred at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, 20 years before. A retired Air Force officer, she has dealt with threats all over the world for many years. Her direct command and control experience has taught her many lesson, which she shares with the reader in Planning for Survivable Networks.
Probably one of the most useful chapters, Chapter 11, "The Business Case," offers advice on presenting to management a case for a network continuity plan. According to the back cover, Hines has taught economics at a community college, and I would say that experience helped her explain the many costs involved in having a disaster recovery plan, including fixed, variable, direct, and indirect costs. She also explains the expected value of having a plan and how to sell that to management.
I recommend this book as an informative discussion of how companies can ensure business and technology continuity in a world with hackers, terrorists, natural disasters, and human error. It's a practical book, but also a surprisingly uplifting book, considering its technical content. I truly enjoyed reading about the adaptable human spirit that enabled managers and workers to keep their businesses going after the 9/11 attacks.
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My book on this subject is one page long.
Page 1: Don't let Slashdot link to you.
â¦as I would prefer death to running a network these days.
from the article:
"probably one of the most useful chapters, chapter 11, "the business case," offers advice on presenting to management a case for..."
in light of the current economy, i find this particular chapter arrangement particularly funny.
ed
Why didn't they mention the survival of slashdot in the face of countless disasters. The great troll strike of 2002 comes to mind! The revival of beowulf jokes, the lawsuit from Nat Portman and the hot grits famine that followed were all destructive but /. survived. Slashdot is able to survive just about any disaster whether in Soviet Russia or at home, and for that it should be commended!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Seems like that chapter is required reading these days.
"Surviving Slashdot" by Oliver Clozoff
"Surviving Slashdot" Illstrates how to build a corporate network that accepts large numbers of incoming connections from stories posted at Slashdot.org, while still allowing employees to make network connections that they need. Techniques covered include round-robin DNS with different servers in different geographical locations, multiple HTTP servers with load balancing, and smooth transition over to a volume web host. like Conxion or cNet at a moment's notice without significant downtime. Other Anti-Slashdotting tactics also discussed.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I've been involved with disaster recovery plans since 1993 in Houston (hurricane seasons, a propensity for flooding). Most reputable companies down here have viable plans including offsite call centers, daily backups to servers/db's offsite, etc..
I have to relate a funny story though. I wrote code for a large bank with a few offices in downtown Houston. As tropical storm Allison approached (you may have seen pictures of the aftermath), we started sending people home. Unfortunately, the shortsighted management had placed two offsite databases IN HOUSTON for data and call center recovery. The last I saw of our particular network administrator was him loading the physical DB server into his truck in hopes that he could get it home and upstairs. The two DR sites both flooded and we lost those servers. Needless to say, that manager is no longer employed with .
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
Rather, the bombing she survived occurred at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, 20 years before.
I happened to be at Rammstein the day after the bombing mentioned. The transmission from the car got blown over the top of a four-story building (other parts didn't quite make it through the building). Quite a powerful bomb that killed and hurt many people. I think it eventually got pinned on the Red Army Faction.
The fun part was I was returning a Siemens teletype to the maintenance depot there, and the other guy in the VW pickup with me had forgotten his military ID (he had left it in his field jacket back at our base). So here we are pulling up to the main gate with this huge wooden crate in the back, and only one of us has any ID. We were lucky they didn't strip search us on the spot.
Chip H.
if it can't be recovered from the on-site week+ old backup, then we close the doors (if the doors are still there) and file for chapter (7, 11, 13, whatever the lawyer suggests)
corporations don't spend on disaster recovery anymore. They blew it on Y2K, its been all down-hill since.
disgruntled IT schlub.
"would you like fries with that ?"
...when disaster strikes, don't forget your towel.
The editor probably thought "Survivable Network" had a more sexy yet ambiguous (profitable) connotation then "Survivable IT Infrastructure". My $.02.
You mean like programmers?
Nothing to see here; Move along.