Different Disasters Call for Different Staffing Requirements

While the goal is to have 99.995% uptime, running a data center means planning for disaster and requires a recovery plan in the event something catastrophic, whether digital or natural, happens. Two of the most common occurrences a data center may experience is a facility becoming too hot or too cold, which will affect operations. Both of these situations can cause damage to supporting hardware and they each require different techniques to remedy the situation. What most people don’t think about is that different types of disasters call for different staffing requirements.

Recovery in a hot site means that all your supporting hardware infrastructure and your data are available in the event of a disaster, which means that it is easier to perform the recovery process. In this situation, almost everything is already set up in order to perform a recovery procedure, so you may only need a few staff members to be available during this type of disaster. Having a support staff during recovery in a hot site isn’t always needed, but having a few experts will suffice for the operation.

Recovery in a cold site means that there might not be any infrastructure or data, which requires more hands on deck. A large supporting staff is needed to meet the requirements for a recovery in a cold site. This type of disaster can also be more costly due to the time and hardware it takes to resolve the issue.

Although each of these scenarios require different staffing requirements, there needs to be a disaster recovery plan in place for a variety of scenarios so your staff knows what to do when disaster hits. Knowing how the staff will get to the site in a timely manner and what type of accommodations they will need to make are important to factor in when coming up with a plan. When choosing the right IT staff for different scenarios,  make sure you know which professionals you will be able to call on immediately after a disaster.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.