Disaster Preparedness

    In addition to the daily watch, we offer an annual disaster prevention and recovery program for your UNIX server.  This program keeps you one step ahead of disaster which will ultimately occur. 

DISASTER PREVENTION & RECOVERY PROGRAM FOR YOUR UNIX/LINUX SERVER 

     We offer a service to our customers in response to a vital need: disaster prevention and recovery.    

      Unix systems are so stable that we all take it for granted that our servers will continue to give us that flawless up-time that we are so used to. However, disaster does strike everyone from time to time for various reasons: storms, electrical surges and spikes, fire, theft, sabotage, or simple normal wear and tear.

     When your server goes down, do you have a disaster plan? Most companies don't. There are some companies that can afford to be down for a day or two while replacement parts are ordered and techies patch the system back together. But if you are like most companies, and  can't afford this down time, you should think about this subject now while you have the luxury of time.

     With that said, here's what we have to offer you to keep you one step ahead of disaster. The program has two elements: prevention and recovery.

 1. PREVENTION OF DISASTER

     Prevention by monitoring your file systems.  For several years, we have been offering our DUKE program, which checks your Unix file systems each night, compiles a report of it's findings, and sends the results to our computer. Our programmers check the reports each morning, alerting us to any obvious problems within your system.

    Prevention by monitoring your site. We offer a preventative program that will help to avert disaster caused by hardware problems and by inadequate procedures at your site.   This is an annual on-site inspection which covers many important points. The intimate details are listed on this link.

 2. RECOVERY FROM DISASTER

    Disaster recovery plan.  When you crash, you want to be up and running again in the  quickest time possible. If you have a functioning tape drive, good backup tapes, a listing of part numbers for reordering, and good current sets of root/boot CDs, then we can get you up and running in the shortest time possible with minimum expense. If any of these elements are missing and we have to restore from scratch, the cost to restore, not to mention employee down time, will skyrocket.   As part of this package, we will discuss and write up a plan with you for recovery, making recommendations specific to your site.

DETAILS OF THE ANNUAL SITE VISIT FOR DISASTER PLANNING 

 As part of this program, we will:

Check the condition of your Unix hardware: make sure all fans are working, clean out floppy drives, CD-ROM drive, and tape drive. We have seen systems fail, destroying the hard drives because a ten dollar case fan seized up.

Make current root/boot recovery CDs, an absolutely necessary step for emergency recovery, and test the CDs by booting up under them. While the system is up under the emergency floppies, we will:

• Test the tape drive to make sure it will pull a file off of the tape. Many times people religiously make backups, only to discover at a critical time that the backups are no good.  The only true way to confirm the integrity of your backups is to pull data off of them. Also, we will check the condition and age of your backup tapes.
  
  
• Make sure your backup software is at the latest version. If not, we will offer to do an upgrade.
  
  
• Make sure all of your media is accessible and in order and that you have all licenses, install media, and device driver disks, and that they are current.
  
  
• Check file systems for excessive junk files taking up space unnecessarily, check log files carefully.
  
  
• Update hardware parts list, so that reordering parts will be quicker and more efficient.
  
  
• Create or update your site map so that we can better support you when workstation specific problems arise. The site map gives us a chart of all port names for printers, routers. modems, terminals, hubs, switches, and port servers on your system, as well as IP addresses for any component on the network. This gives us the information we need when we receive a support request without having to barrage you with questions to obtain this data.
  
  
• Print out all system specific specs.  Having this information will maximize recovery speed in cases where a component of the system fails not requiring a complete system reinstall. This list includes kernel tuning parameters, printer and modem configurations, SCSI settings, and other hardware parameters.
  
  
• Test your UPS (uninterruptible power supply) to make sure it is still alive. After several years, the batteries in a UPS will die, but you may not know it unless you test it. We will also test your UPS software and make sure it is functioning properly. This type of software shuts down the Unix system gracefully during a period of prolonged power outage and reports any surges, sags, or spikes in power.
  
  
• Test your outgoing and incoming connections, vital for support.
  
  
• Check your system's security. We will advise you on security, and address any of your concerns. We will change passwords if you desire. We can also add a dialup password that pertains only to connections made through the Internet, or set up IP Tables allowing only certain IP addresses in. We can optionally create a logging function to record all users who log into your system and what port they enter from.
  
  
• Optionally register all unregistered software on your Unix system to remove the annoying nag messages about unregistered software.
  
  
• Give you a report of our findings and make recommendations for upgrades and enhancements that will be beneficial to your organization.