¶ … RECOVERY STRATEGY FOR SERVER #3 ONLY (LISTED IN APPENDIX 1), WHICH INCLUDES 1 LAN SERVER AND SOFTWARE FOR CITY HALL ONLY. YOUR RECOVERY STRATEGY SHOULD BE DESIGNED FOR THE 'WORST CASE SCENARIO,' WHICH MEANS A COMPLETE DESTRUCTION OF CITY HALL. JUSTIFY YOUR RECOMMENDATION(S) USING ANY INFO IN THE DESCRIPTION OF THE CLIENT, APPENDICES, ETC. Since this scenario includes a complete destruction of City Hall it is necessary to have an alternative facility that can act as a backup to the main systems functions of the city. Also, the safety of the citizen base is paramount. The citizens of the city need to have all of the city functions available to them if the need should arise. Because these two extremes are involved (ie, complete destruction of city hall and the continued safety of the citizens), the recovery time frame should be as minimal as possible.

Server #3 has most of the city's records, and thus is important to the continued operation of city hall. Since the seat of government will have to be removed to a remote location, it is necessary to have the ability to bring this software online at a remote site. The affected software controls payroll for all city employees, fire shift control, collectors office, water department and building department records and all records for the HR department. The basic RTOs and RPOs for these systems are either one month or one week, depending on the department. However, the recovery of the time of the HR and Finance departments are critical, and need to be accomplished immediately.

City Hall is assumed to be 35 miles from the other possible internal facilities. Among the other facilities, there are several which have the room available to house the backup systems necessary to regain the information systems control that the surviving members of City Hall will need. However, these facilities may need all of the room that they have available to adequately house victims of the disaster and run their own recovery and emergency operations. Therefore, an external facility will be used which can be maintained by a vendor. This facility will have to be within the 35-mile range, and have the ability to recover City Hall within the 4-hour time constraints.

An internal vendor would always be preferable because the facility is already paid for, so the cost of continuous rent would not be an issue. With an external/vendor facility the constant need to pay for rent of the facility could be a problem, but there are reasons why this is preferable to an internal one. The city is small, so it can be looked at like a small company. Small companies will often house their means of recovery at an offsite location because that gives them extra room internally. In the city's case, there is room at the other facilities, but in a disaster which destroys City Hall the need for these facilities as backup shelters could be an issue. In a disaster, hospitals and other emergency facilities quickly overflow and there is a need to house victims in other places. There would also be the need to have more emergency people working during the disaster, so the other internal facilities would need all of the room available to them to coordinate their own emergency resources. For these reasons, an external facility would be the ideal choice for this small entity.

Another reason for an externally located recovery center is that it could be a central point for the decision makers in all facilities to meet. All of the needed equipment would be in place, maintained by experts, and ready in case of an extreme need. The facility could also be gotten ready immediately. If an internal facility were used, a lot of additional personnel from City Hall would be invading, and setting up needed equipment, in a space needed for disaster recovery of the citizens of the city. Thus, an external location could centralize decision-making personnel, keep those people out of the way of emergency personnel, and be able to easily start within the four hour time frame dictated by the various offices within City Hall.

This is a small community and the tax revenues need to be taken into consideration. The cost of continuous availability and replication/high availability make them strategies that may be desirable, but they are unrealistic. However, the RTOs and RPOs are high (less than 4 hours for each one) so it needs to be a hot site that is lower in cost. This means that the strategy will have to be either remote journaling or electronic vaulting. Remote journaling is almost as costly as the first two strategies and does not give the user much of an advantage over electronic vaulting. Therefore,...

This is still a hot site that can be recovered quickly, and it has the added advantage of a lower cost alternative to the other hot site alternatives. Unfortunately, some data may be lost when the disaster hits, but this should be minimized by the fact that vaulting occurs in a daily basis. Thus, the only data lost will be the information gathered on the day of the disaster.
Question 2

FOR CITY HALL EMPLOYEES ONLY, WHAT WORK AREA RECOVERY APPROACH DO YOU RECOMMEND FOR THE REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENTED IN APPENDIX 4 OF THE FINAL EXAM MATERIALS? AGAIN, JUSTIFY YOUR RECOMMENDATION(S) BASED UPON INFORMATION IN THE DESCRIPTION OF THE CLIENT, APENDICES, ETC.

City Hall employees must be able to recover their work spaces as quickly as possible because they are responsible for the care of all city employees. However, the critical functions of City Hall must be maintained at a cost which will not severely impact the future finances of the city. A strategy for any city will probably incorporate several different alternatives which will accommodate the different levels of RPOs and RTOs to be met by those departments within City Hall.

The first possible alternative is to have an external facility that is maintained by the vendor. This facility may or may not be available when it is needed by the City Hall. However, there are city employees that would need to have a workspace available immediately. These employees would benefit from a space that is either dedicated to their use or can be set up very quickly. The vendor alternative to a dedicated site would be a disaster preparedness trailer that could be quickly installed at a predetermined location. The issue here is that either a trailer may not be available, or it may not be possible, depending on the condition of the roadways to move the trailer into place. Therefore, it would be necessary, for those employees who are immediately needed, to have a dedicated facility where they could go and perform their functions.

For these reasons, an internal facility should be used for the immediate RTO and RPO functions. Either out of the way conference rooms or training facilities can be used, and only immediately essential personnel would be required to go to work.

For the longer RTO and RPO functions (those that need to be setup within a week) a trailer or set of trailers could be installed for those functions, or a building could be rented for the purpose. Renting a building may be problematic because there may not be one available within the time frame needed. Therefore, the trailers would probably be the best solution for longer term RTO and RPO functions.

Employees that did not have functions that were either essential or had jobs that did not include confidential material, could continue to work from home. These employees would have access to the remote server facility via the internet. This function should be available to them quickly after the disaster is over. These employees could continue to work from home until there was a more permanent facility for them to go to. These would be employees whose functions had an RTO or RPO of one month or longer.

For the immediate internal solution, the new police facility would be used for these personnel. Since this does not impact a large number of people (meaning: there are just a very few people who would be needed to perform the functions indicated by the immediate RPOs and RTOs), it would also not impact the police department's ability to function, even in a disaster. The employees will be given access to the facility from a previously designated entrance so that their impact will not even be felt by the police.

Question 3

FOR THE FOLLOWING TWO COMPLETED QUESTIONNAIRES, DOCUMENT THE INFORMATION FOR EACH DEPARTMENT AS SHOWN IN APPENDIX 2 (THIS IS SIMILAR TO OUR FIRST HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT):

POLICE DEPARTMENT Business IMPACT ANALYSIS QUESTIONNAIRE

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT DEPARTMENT Business IMPACT ANALYSIS -- QUESTIONNAIRE

QUESTION 3 TEMPLATE -- Criticality of Police and Community Development Block Grant Departments

Department / Division

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) Required by Dept.

RTO Criticality Recom- mended by Student

Reason for Level of Criticality

Police Dept.

Immediate

4 hours

This refers to the functions of the dispatchers and employees who support the police department. During an emergency, police officers will be responding…