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the value of making plans
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hymie!
Mar 5, 2020, 7:54:01 AM3/5/20
to
I am a contractor working for a Large Government Agency. At least one
person here knows me, and I hope he won't blow my cover. :)
$LGA is trying to make contingency plans for a virus outbreak. So $LGA
has declared that we will have an all-sites all-employees TeleWork Day.
Among other things, they want to stress-test the VPN infrastructure.
Probably some continuity-of-operations testing too. TeleWork Day is
optional, and obviously there are some people who cannot telework, but
they are encouraging all employees to telework if possible.
My contracting company has pretty much declared that we are all Mission
Critical, and we will not be participating in TeleWork Day. Fair enough.
I personally disagree -- I, for one, may be Mission Critical, but I am
certainly not On Site Critical; the customer ($LGA) asked us to do this,
and I think we should try to accommodate them -- but whatever, the
decision was made, and I will follow it.
My contracting company then said that each of our project teams needs to
get together and come up with a contingency plan -- what we will do to
ensure mission operations continue in the event of a shutdown of the
$LGA campus.
They don't want to do anything crazy like, y'know, TRY IT OUT or anything.
They just want to have a plan.
Furrfu.
--hymie! http://nasalinux.net/~hymie hy...@nasalinux.net
person here knows me, and I hope he won't blow my cover. :)
$LGA is trying to make contingency plans for a virus outbreak. So $LGA
has declared that we will have an all-sites all-employees TeleWork Day.
Among other things, they want to stress-test the VPN infrastructure.
Probably some continuity-of-operations testing too. TeleWork Day is
optional, and obviously there are some people who cannot telework, but
they are encouraging all employees to telework if possible.
My contracting company has pretty much declared that we are all Mission
Critical, and we will not be participating in TeleWork Day. Fair enough.
I personally disagree -- I, for one, may be Mission Critical, but I am
certainly not On Site Critical; the customer ($LGA) asked us to do this,
and I think we should try to accommodate them -- but whatever, the
decision was made, and I will follow it.
My contracting company then said that each of our project teams needs to
get together and come up with a contingency plan -- what we will do to
ensure mission operations continue in the event of a shutdown of the
$LGA campus.
They don't want to do anything crazy like, y'know, TRY IT OUT or anything.
They just want to have a plan.
Furrfu.
--hymie! http://nasalinux.net/~hymie hy...@nasalinux.net
The Horny Goat
Mar 5, 2020, 10:33:42 AM3/5/20
to
student in a disk drive manufacturing plant in Winnipeg some 40 years
ago. It went something like (notes are mine - not in the original
plan)
"Our data center exists to support the production activities of our
plant. If our data center (note: on the outskirts of town) and our
backup site (note: in the center of downtown - the organization was
named but not germane here) are ever simultaneously both down we can
reasonably assume a city wide disaster has taken place and thus there
will be no prospect of resuming disk production in the immediate
future...."
which I thought was unusually insightful for this type of document.
Grant Taylor
Mar 5, 2020, 1:17:10 PM3/5/20
to
On 3/5/20 8:33 AM, The Horny Goat wrote:
> which I thought was unusually insightful for this type of document.
Agreed.
> which I thought was unusually insightful for this type of document.
I wonder how many D.R. plans start to fail at the prospect of a pandemic.
I also wonder if D.R. plans should account for a pandemic, or if the
business effectively suspends, does the D.R. plan also suspend?
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
The Horny Goat
Mar 5, 2020, 7:16:39 PM3/5/20
to
has promised the 2020 Summer Olympics WILL take place in Tokyo some
time in the second half of 2020 though no promises they will make the
scheduled July starting date.
And you KNOW the Saudis are taking it seriously when they cancel the
2020 pilgrimage to Mecca which in addition to being a major religious
event is the biggest non-petroleum related event in Saudi Arabia (they
make billions in religious tourism)
-dsr-
Mar 11, 2020, 11:08:05 AM3/11/20
to
A plan to keep your business running during difficult times is a business
continuity plan. It should address all the likely events: natural disasters,
landlords going crazy, local sports teams winning championships, scheduled
holidays, weather events, and of course pandemics. It's all outside-causation
stuff.
DR is the planning for when things in your production chain (whatever that
might be -- physical products, software delivery, services...) are crushed
by an event and you have to resurrect it.
Your BC plan should account for a pandemic. Your DR plan should account for
pandemics in the sense that you need remote access when you can't travel,
or need trained monkeys when your regular monkeys are sick, and so forth.
I wrote both of these for $orkplace, and they cover pandemics, but not
any state-level actor or equivalent, and not anything which destroys/disables
the entire East Coast.
"In the event of a meteor strike or similar disaster destroying both the
primary datacenter and headquarters, the company does not expect to survive
as a viable business."
-dsr-
The Horny Goat
Mar 12, 2020, 9:00:23 PM3/12/20
to
On Wed, 11 Mar 2020 15:32:42 -0000 (UTC), Roger Bell_West
<roger+a...@nospam.firedrake.org> wrote:
>On 2020-03-11, -dsr- wrote:
>>"In the event of a meteor strike or similar disaster destroying both the
>>primary datacenter and headquarters, the company does not expect to survive
>>as a viable business."
>
>I believe the cam.ac.uk techies take the approach that anything which
>destroys both its north and its south datacentres is a bigger problem
>than they have to worry about.
>
>The plan I wrote for $ORK includes something along the lines of:
>
>"Total destruction of London: uploads will be slightly delayed."
I'm not surprised that's their attitude - I am mostly surprised they
actually put it in print. The one I read in my student days actually
DID put it in print though I'm sure they were thinking either nuclear
attack or a major flood (which Winnipeg had had in the 50s or 60s -
can't remember which and the result was that they built a series of
dykes which our plant was about 1/4 mile on the right side of)
Again - it was 40 years ago when I was a noobie coop student who knew
nothing and knew he knew nothing.....
<roger+a...@nospam.firedrake.org> wrote:
>On 2020-03-11, -dsr- wrote:
>>"In the event of a meteor strike or similar disaster destroying both the
>>primary datacenter and headquarters, the company does not expect to survive
>>as a viable business."
>
>destroys both its north and its south datacentres is a bigger problem
>than they have to worry about.
>
>The plan I wrote for $ORK includes something along the lines of:
>
>"Total destruction of London: uploads will be slightly delayed."
I'm not surprised that's their attitude - I am mostly surprised they
actually put it in print. The one I read in my student days actually
DID put it in print though I'm sure they were thinking either nuclear
attack or a major flood (which Winnipeg had had in the 50s or 60s -
can't remember which and the result was that they built a series of
dykes which our plant was about 1/4 mile on the right side of)
Again - it was 40 years ago when I was a noobie coop student who knew
nothing and knew he knew nothing.....
Wojciech Derechowski
Mar 15, 2020, 1:51:01 AM3/15/20
to
On Wed, 11 Mar 2020 15:32:42 +0000, Roger Bell_West wrote:
> "Total destruction of London: uploads will be slightly delayed."
This prompted me to reread Braess' paper and question the delays.
> "Total destruction of London: uploads will be slightly delayed."
That destruction may actually improve throughput across some paths.
WD
--
Who is Entscheidungs and what is his problem?
Mans Nilsson
May 29, 2020, 6:14:21 AM5/29/20
to
--
Måns Nilsson primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina
MN-1334-RIPE SA0XLR +46 705 989668
Do you have exactly what I want in a plaid poindexter bar bat??
The Horny Goat
May 29, 2020, 9:13:37 AM5/29/20
to
On Fri, 29 May 2020 10:14:20 -0000 (UTC), Mans Nilsson
<mans...@besserwisser.org> wrote:
>Den 2020-03-05 skrev Grant Taylor <gta...@tnetconsulting.net>:
>> On 3/5/20 8:33 AM, The Horny Goat wrote:
>>> which I thought was unusually insightful for this type of document.
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>> I wonder how many D.R. plans start to fail at the prospect of a pandemic.
>>
>> I also wonder if D.R. plans should account for a pandemic, or if the
>> business effectively suspends, does the D.R. plan also suspend?
>
>Our continuity plan included pandemic. It helped.
I don't know about that but I was a coop student in a disk drive plant
<mans...@besserwisser.org> wrote:
>Den 2020-03-05 skrev Grant Taylor <gta...@tnetconsulting.net>:
>> On 3/5/20 8:33 AM, The Horny Goat wrote:
>>> which I thought was unusually insightful for this type of document.
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>> I wonder how many D.R. plans start to fail at the prospect of a pandemic.
>>
>> I also wonder if D.R. plans should account for a pandemic, or if the
>> business effectively suspends, does the D.R. plan also suspend?
>
>Our continuity plan included pandemic. It helped.
on the edge of town some 40 years ago. Their backup site was downtown
and their DR said (pretty much a direct quote) "this data center
exists to serve the manufacturing needs of our plant. If both our data
center and the backup site are ever offline at the same time it is
likely a city-wide catastrophe has taken place and we will not be
manufacturing drives in the immediate future and therefore will have
no operations to support'
Mans Nilsson
May 29, 2020, 4:45:50 PM5/29/20
to
Den 2020-05-29 skrev The Horny Goat <lcr...@home.ca>:
>>> I also wonder if D.R. plans should account for a pandemic, or if the
>>> business effectively suspends, does the D.R. plan also suspend?
>>
>>Our continuity plan included pandemic. It helped.
...
>>> I also wonder if D.R. plans should account for a pandemic, or if the
>>> business effectively suspends, does the D.R. plan also suspend?
>>
>>Our continuity plan included pandemic. It helped.
> likely a city-wide catastrophe has taken place and we will not be
> manufacturing drives in the immediate future and therefore will have
> no operations to support'
situation. Pulling the plug and going home is not an option.
--
Måns Nilsson primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina
MN-1334-RIPE SA0XLR +46 705 989668
LEVELS with a blue ribbon SENATE SUB-COMMITTEE!
The Horny Goat
May 29, 2020, 11:15:18 PM5/29/20
to
On Fri, 29 May 2020 20:45:48 -0000 (UTC), Mans Nilsson
<mans...@besserwisser.org> wrote:
>> likely a city-wide catastrophe has taken place and we will not be
>> manufacturing drives in the immediate future and therefore will have
>> no operations to support'
>
>$EMPLOYER expects to run at full, refocused, capacity in this
>situation. Pulling the plug and going home is not an option.
I'm pretty sure in the early 1980s they were thinking more about
<mans...@besserwisser.org> wrote:
>> likely a city-wide catastrophe has taken place and we will not be
>> manufacturing drives in the immediate future and therefore will have
>> no operations to support'
>
>$EMPLOYER expects to run at full, refocused, capacity in this
>situation. Pulling the plug and going home is not an option.
nuclear war than something like Covid-19.
In other words something that physically obliterates the plant rather
than being a state or province wide 'lockdown'. This was a city of
just under 600,000 40 years ago and about 780000 now.
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