Introduction to NonStop Operations Management

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Contingency Planning
Overview
Contingency planning can help you prevent, prepare for, and recover from a disaster.
Disasters can occur any time and anywhere. In companies where day-to-day business
activity is tied to a computer system, a sound recovery plan is imperative. Planning
ahead can help you prevent some disasters and to respond to those disasters you cannot
prevent. This section helps you plan so that you can take preventive measures and, if a
disaster is unavoidable, to recover as quickly as possible with minimal damage to your
system and data.
This section ends with a check list that sums up the steps involved in contingency
planning.
What Is a Disaster?
A disaster can be any sudden calamitous event that brings widespread or localized
destruction, loss, chaos, or injury.
Disasters are commonly associated with environmental occurrences such as fire, flood,
earthquake, and so on. However, companies are also at risk from nonenvironmental
disasters (for example, a chemical leak that makes a facility unusable), crimes, civil
unrest, utility failures (such as a power failure), and telecommunications failures.
Disasters can lead to great losses by disrupting internal business procedures; by causing
a loss of business volume, corporate assets, and goodwill; or by damaging the
company’s reputation. In a data processing environment, losing staff, materials, supplies,
data, equipment, power, and so on, partially or totally, could damage a computer system
so much that further losses would severely hurt a company.
If your company depends upon its computer for day-to-day business activity, it is
important for you to identify the risks to system operations, to take preventive actions,
and to develop a recovery plan.
Preventing Disasters
The first step toward preparing for a disaster is making a dedicated effort to prevent one
from occurring. Tandem systems give you a head start on disaster prevention by
providing continuous availability and fault tolerance, by preserving data integrity, and by
allowing geographic independence and flexible system configurations. However, it is up
to you to make sure that the unique features of Tandem systems are fully used and
maintained and that other areas of your operation are reviewed with the goal in mind of
preventing disasters.
The following paragraphs provide tips on reviewing:
•
The computer center location and facilities
•
Security
•
Preventive maintenance and system-monitoring procedures