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Case of the Great Hot-Site Swap
BobB writes "Two universities — Bowdoin in Maine and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles — have entered a unique arrangement under which they are backing up each other's web sites, email and servers on different ends of the continent. They say this could be a disaster recovery model all sorts of organizations could follow. From the article: 'When Bowdoin switched over to Exchange e-mail, so the schools would have similar e-mail infrastructure, LMU staffers were their guides and advisers. "We implemented that pretty quickly," says Davis, the Bowdoin CIO. "When we launched Exchange, we had just eight calls to our help desk." And the shared experience of the infrastructure components then forms a kind of informal help desk, where managers and staff can reach out for advice, brainstorm and troubleshoot problems with their colleagues a continent away.'"
Case of the Great Hot-Wife Swap
Pity. It being a Saturday, I kind of wanted to read that article.
From what I understand, this is pretty common in higher ed -- in fact, the college that I work for is currently setting up something similar with another college in the area. Not cross-continent redundancy, true, but enough to keep things going should there be a smaller disaster in the area. If all of Western New York is wiped out, I don't really care if people can get their email.
This really came to the forefront with the beating the New Orleans area colleges took during Katrina; from what I recall, Loyola and Tulane were really unprepared and suffered for it.
--saint
Excluding religious points.. why not? Exchange is nowdays a VERY MATURE colaboration system and the de-facto standard for business in many places. What's the diference? Use Exchange, GMail, POP3 or whatever you want. It's all about freedome, isn't it?
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
We have many clients that mirror backups between East and West coast. They may be connected at each end at that speed, but they are almost assuredly not achieving throughput at that rate.
YMMV, but there are 3000 miles to deal with here. I've never been able to achieve speeds like that, and we have some seriously fat pipes in our data centers.
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
...that you might have to accept the legal responsibilies of the site that is being backed up. It's not just a simple exchange of providing corresponding services... Take it down to a personal level... who would you trust to use your personal computer as a backup server (in a reciprocal manner)? No one that hasn't your full and complete trust is my guess. Encryption would provide some protection but this isn't about data backup but service fallback.
So unless you have some kind of legal agreement covering your actual risks it's not for everyone. But for large scale organisations, with real legal clout, like universities it might makes sense. But not for individuals.
Who modded this? Aside from the post being more or less irrelevant (it's not about a multi-peered architecture) his comparison to his LAN using his parents system should have been a good reason to rule out ANY enterprise architecture expertise whatsoever.
That said, as a system admin who's business does not have any kind of secondary solution (no hot/hot, no hot/cold, etc) I'd still be leery of trusting my data or my lively hood to a peer and an admin team I didn't know. Maybe this works better in academia, but I don't see banks or mortgage companies dropping their secondary sites and teaming with competitors to provide this service.
Quack, quack.
/late night rant on/Actually there is a large number of individuals who are supportes of the free/os movement for ideological reasons: "it's all about freedom" they cry, "let's us all decide what to use", "information wants to be free", "yadda yadda"... And then, when somebody chose to use Exchange or Vista or whatever they are the first to jump and cry foul....Wasn't it about freedom after all? Well, they made their choise, so what's the freaking problem then? It's actualy very amusing. Bytes ate bytes. Software is software and a tool is just a tool and everything that is above childish ideological reasons... Let's people use whatever they want, and believe me, the world will be a less hateful place. /late night rant off/
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
It's always nice to see something from Maine featured in technology news. We're a tiny state population-wise, but there are many high-tech companies here. Hell, even in my own town there is a company that developed and makes the MK47 Advanced Lightweight Grenade Launcher as well as a bunch of other armaments for the military. Sure, this post is off topic and my karma blows already, but I always have to say "Go Maine!" whenever I read about my little state on any technology forum/site.
Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
The alternate nameservers for many Universities are often at other schools. Not the same thing, but interesting to note:
mtnBook:~ $ whois rochester.edu
Name Servers:
NS1.UTD.ROCHESTER.EDU 128.151.2.1
NS2.UTD.ROCHESTER.EDU 128.151.7.6
SIMON.CS.CORNELL.EDU
DNS.CS.WISC.EDU
mtnBook:~ $ whois cornell.edu
Name Servers:
BIGRED.CIT.CORNELL.EDU 128.253.180.2
DNS.CIT.CORNELL.EDU 192.35.82.50
CAYUGA.CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
mtnBook:~ $ whois ucsb.edu
Name Servers:
NS1.UCSB.EDU 128.111.1.1
NS2.UCSB.EDU 128.111.1.2
KNOT.BROWN.EDU
There's a bunch more NYU/UCBerkeley, WUSTL/ULA, etc.
The University of Cincinnati, The Ohio State University, and the University of Miami (Ohio) are already doing this.
That way you only take a real hit during the first copy.
After that, you should be able to copy just the changes and the new files. It is amazing.
"They say this could be a disaster recovery model all sorts of organizations could follow."
For private businesses maybe, but I'm sure hosting backups on other organizations hardware is not acceptable under SOX.
CIA, FBI, CSIS, KGB, MI5...
It is the most secure backup system in the world.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This is common for survivalist and preparedness minded folks. You and a trusted relative or friend exchange backup critical gear/necessities/copies of records, etc. In case of catastrophic loss of either abode, the other person has a decent "backup" for you to fall back on. Arrangements like this have been quite common for some decades now, usually they include mutually assured lodging, should full long term evacuation be required. IMO, it is quite a sound idea. Remember on the news, you see the same scene all the time, those scenes from..take your pick, fires, floods, hurricanes or whatever.. the newsies always zero in on those folks who are all freaked out and sad, and EVERY time they say "We lost EVERYTHING!"..well, there's no need for that if you take the time in advance to preposition enough of your gear so it doesn't fall into the "everything" category. The situation will still suck, but having a nice set of backup everything will sure help mitigate things and make the situation suck *less*. As to what to exchange/store, use your imagination, what would you like to have as a backup if for some reason your home just got wiped out? Spare sets of clothes for everyone, favorite toys for the kids, some electronic gear, tools, sporting goods, books, other media of importance to you, family photos, household records, personal mementos, etc. Salt to taste there. Even just a stuffed closet is good enough, that and the place to evacuate *to*.
That, and what we call BOBs, or "bug out bags" are good ideas. A "bob" is a backpack or other container (backbacks are good in case you get stuck on foot), that has enough critical essentials to keep you alive for a week or so, enough even on foot to get you out of the disaster area most likely. It's called a bug-out bag from the old army term, and it is designed so if you have zero notice-hear on the radio local railroad has a tanker car full of chlorine leaking, nasty forest fire heading your way, and it's close, etc, that you can grab it and go, out the door within less than one minute. Very high speed emergency evacuation. The deal is, you hope you never need it, but if you do, it literally could save your life.
Interesting subject, and although it is not directly related to the main parent IT topic, the concept is very similar.
"lively hood" - is that as opposed to a boring neighborhood?