Disaster recovery

In addition to the standard recovery planning projects. I actually have experience implementing a disaster recovery under real world conditions. One of my clients had their data center flooded during a long term (over a year) data center upgrade and expansion. Since the data center along with its contained hardware and software configurations were under such constant change the disaster recovery plan was more of a guideline than a step by step cookbook.

Most of the hardware , CPU and DASD, had to be replaced during the process. As with any lost data center we were under a tight time constraint to get things back to a usable status, unfortunately we had the additional restriction of not wanting to delay our expansion project, which was also mandatory. Neither goal could afford a delay in implementation. So we took advantage of the situation, an empty floor space with a short window of not having to run production work, and 'Just did it!'. By the time we were done we had installed and upgraded CPUs and DASD along with new versions of the operating system and its support software. By the time the recovery was done we had gotten all work done in the window allowed for just the recovery and brought our expansion project ahead months instead of being behind.