Disaster recovery magnetic media backup (offsite storage)

Abstract

Information technology has advanced at a phenomenal rate over the last two decades, resulting in an overwhelming dependency by most organisations, on the availability of on-line systems and computer processing capabilities. At the beginning of this evolution, systems availability and reliability were nothing to be taken for granted and most data centres had well documented manual fall-back procedures to rely upon. Over the last decade, however, with hardware realiability and performance forever improving, such manual procedures have practically gone by the wayside if they even still exist. Most data centres no longer update or rehearse manual procedures and existing ones are likely out of date and the staff unfamiliar with them. This is itself does not preclude catastrophe. Individual corrupted or lost files can be recovered fairly quickly (if they are backed up). Reserve DASD units can be utilised in the event of DASD hardware failure, and systems can be easily IPL'd if a power interruption occurs and no UPS is in place. These are normal, anticipated types of problems that can be encountered in any Data centre at any time.