* A lesson for all of us
My last few columns have focused on how foolish it is to send unencrypted data offsite. Last time, I suggested that if you must move data on tapes rather than transferring it electronically, you should at least be closely monitoring every step in the transfer process.
Perhaps because of reading that column some of you will begin such a review. Be aware however, that the suggestions I made omit one important step: test a system to see if it actually works the way you think it does.
Some people just have to learn things the hard way, and alas, I fall into that category. For instance, yesterday, last night and early this morning (right now it is Saturday at 3 a.m.), an important lesson was driven home. Here, briefly, a tale of woe:
On Monday of this week, an important package was shipped from California to my office in Massachusetts. I needed its contents in time for a flight at noon on Sunday, and paid the extra money to make sure it would reach me by Friday.
United Parcel Service (UPS) has an online tracking mechanism, so I watched the progress of the package as it moved eastwards. I entered my tracking number and on Monday saw the “origin scan,” “Billing received information” and “Departure scan.” Then, nothing.
Not to worry however, because each day when I checked I could also see a merry note from UPS offering assurance that the package was “on schedule.”
Friday morning arrived, and so did my daily UPS delivery. No package though. Checking the UPS Package Tracking site again I saw the following two notes, one at 4 a.m. telling me “A late train caused this delay” (uh-oh), and then an “arrival scan at” 5:45 a.m. (phew).
And of course, the cheery “on schedule” note.
Remembering the old Russian proverb “trust, but verify,” I called the company to ask where the package was, and why there was no indication of a “departure scan” from its present location in Chelmsford, Mass., to indicate it was moving in my direction.
“Don’t worry,” I was told. “Sometimes we don’t bother to scan things. And my display still says it’s scheduled for an on-time delivery.”
It was now late afternoon on Friday, so you may feel free to insert at this point a picture of an analyst’s blood freezing in his veins.
The parcel delivery company had a system, and it sometimes (often?) followed it. Bottom line: the company had no idea where my package was, and had a system that didn’t reflect with much accuracy (and obviously not in real time) where in the delivery chain the shipment actually might be. Was it on a loading dock somewhere? On a truck? At my door? I could verify the last by looking – it wasn’t there. The fact that at this point I knew more about where the package was than UPS did provided little comfort.
As of 2 a.m. on Saturday, the package was still undelivered. And still scheduled for an on-time delivery.
The moral of all this: understanding how your system is supposed to work isn’t the same thing as knowing how it really operates. As a consequence, a diagram of your computer room’s topology may not mean much if it is a week out of date, unverified backups may not be recoverable, and untested disaster plans may just become another aspect of a disaster.
Make sure that when tapes move off site they do so in precisely the way they are meant to.
For most of you, data archiving plays a crucial role in your overall business continuity plans. Do you know what happens to your tapes during each off-site phase of their lifecycle? Ameritrade, Bank of America and Time Warner didn’t, and they are now in all the newspapers (and this column) for all the wrong reasons.
Moving tapes? Test, and verify.
** If you will be attending the Storage World Conference in Long Beach Calif., on June 7-9, please stop by and say hi. I’ll be running two sessions at the conference, a panel on SMB Storage on June 8 (starring senior execs from EMC, FalconStor, HP, IBM and several other leading vendors) and a round table discussion on June 9 on the topic of “How to create the best disaster recovery plan” (featuring top IT executives who will share real-world experiences). Alternatively, you can stop by and try to skewer me at one of the “analyst face-to-face” meetings. Feel free to take your best shot.
Check out the conference agenda at https://www.storageworldconference.com/agenda/
