Slow Hurricane Season Leaves Breathing Room for DR Testing
The 2013 hurricane season has been a bust so far -- to the relief of businesses up and down the East Coast.
AccuWeather.com reported earlier this week that when Humberto graduated to hurricane status on Sept. 11, the world was a few hours away from breaking the satellite-era record for the latest first hurricane. (That mark is still held by 2002.)
Nonetheless, there's plenty of time left in hurricane season. Forecasters are still expecting about six hurricanes this year, two of them major, and a total of 16 tropical storms.
The lack of hurricanes thus far is an opportunity for IT managers and managed service providers to test those disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity implementations, though. Any time big storms and outages aren't sweeping across the country is like the eye of a hurricane -- a chance to make sure the systems in place are actually working.
A business continuity plan that hasn't been tested in the last six months or so isn't a plan so much as a fantasy. Systems change, hardware is replaced, patches get applied and key new applications get added to the environment. This lull in hurricane season is a great time to make sure the DR systems are working, that data is being properly backed up, and that when it fails back, it will come back online.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on September 19, 2013