Dealing with Disaster - The UQ Experience
The University of Queensland has had an interesting 12 months from the point of view of disasters, both natural and man-made. This has given University Networks at UQ many opportunities to test and refine its formal and tacit disaster recovery procedures as well as build toward a more effective team culture in dealing with incidents of any size.
The first incident of note, in late August 2010, was a UPS-sourced datacentre fire in one of the University’s core corporate datacentres. This had significant impacts on University operations, and recovering from this event required substantial effort across all of ITS, including University Networks.
The threat of flooding – and indeed the loss of several network assets in low-lying areas of the St Lucia campus during January’s flood events – again tested disaster preparation and recovery for the University Networks team. In particular the team had to deal with site access issues, the potential (but fortunately, unrealised) loss of a datacentre, and subsequently the loss of several buildings’ equipment.
This presentation will briefly describe the above events’ impact on University Networks operations, what steps were taken to recover from these events quickly and efficiently, and what lessons were learned from these events.
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Iain Robertson's Biography |
