System failures force firms to time needs for backups

By John Agsalud

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Mar 06, 2012

~~<p>Years ago, we received a rather disturbing letter from a mainland-based employee working for one of Hawaii's most important and prominent companies. The letter claimed, among other things, that this company's IT operations were in such dire straits that a system failure would bring local commerce to a standstill for weeks, and cripple Hawaii's economy. We reviewed these claims in detail, and came to the conclusion that the author was, more than anything else, a disgruntled employee. However, he still raised good points about planning for, recovering from and even preventing system failures.</p>
<p>Our author was of the mind that the Recovery Point Objective of the company was out of whack. In plain English, RPO is that point in time to which you can effectively restore your system. Typically, this will be the date and time of your last good backup (or set of backups).</p>
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Years ago, we received a rather disturbing letter from a mainland-based employee working for one of Hawaii's most important and prominent companies. The letter claimed, among other things, that this company's IT operations were in such dire straits that a system failure would bring local commerce to a standstill for weeks, and cripple Hawaii's economy. We reviewed these claims in detail, and came to the conclusion that the author was, more than anything else, a disgruntled employee. However, he still raised good points about planning for, recovering from and even preventing system failures.

Our author was of the mind that the Recovery Point Objective of the company was out of whack. In plain English, RPO is that point in time to which you can effectively restore your system. Typically, this will be the date and time of your last good backup (or set of backups). Login for more...