Continuity of business plan

Continuity under minor adversity

The computing environment serving QTP in its functions of teaching, research, and administrative support has many features built in to ensure continuity of business for a wide variety of hardware and software failures. This includes physical plant problems such as offices becoming not usable because of lack of AC or flooding caused by leaks in fire suppression systems. These features includes standby network switches and dual servers, where another system can take over required functions very quickly. Multiple power sources are in place for critical systems, with one of the power sources being uninterruptable and connected to a diesel generator. Similarly, at the software level, every service has a standby service configured that can take over automatically or with a simple operator command. These are services like e-mail and web services.

Continuity under major disturbance

A major disturbance is understood to include total desctruction, such as by fire, of all IT support equipment in the New Physics Building. In such a case, we have off-site backup tapes of all user data on the QTP system. The off-site tapes are switched out once a week. So in the worst case, the restored data is one week out of date. QTP does not have the resources to have spare hardware available off-site. After a disaster, we would need to find a system that could host our services. We have several sites on campus who are willing to provide such service in case they are not affected. These are Chemistry and CLAS. Since Physics is in the same building, it is not likely that a disaster that wipes out QTP services leaves Physcis services operational. QTP does not have off-site records of personnel. It is assumed that the central UF personnel databases will be able to provide the information to contact missing personnel after a disaster, either because they were not affected or as a result of their business continuity planning.

Privileged access backup plan

If the system administrator, Erik Deumens, is indisposed, the list of system passwords can be obtained from Judy Parker or her staff. The sheet of paper is locked in the QTP safe. All system procedures and descriptions are available online, and on the off-site tape, in /home/qtp/progs/system/config/...

>> top