Question

One of your clients from chapter 5, Easton Car Parts, has hired you to help them develop a disaster plan for operations at both of their plants , which are several hundred miles apart in Wisconsin. Each plant has more than 100 networked PCs. One plant has two Microsoft NT servers and a Novell NetWare server. The other plant has two Microsoft NT servers and a DEC minicomputer. the company needs a plan that will enable either plant to access information from servers or minicomputer data files within 48 hours of a disaster and a plan that will minimize down time from failed disks, power problems, or other similar interruptions. Use the space that follows to outline your plan.

Answer 1

This is a simple diagram showing how the network could be connected and placed. A few pointers:

• Some of the computers are very old like DEC Mini computer, Novell Server, therefore these should be used based on their current conditions
• DEC computer could be used to query plan database in case of any system failure, so it needs to be isolated from both the plants.
• Server 2 and 3 in the diagram are the backup recovery servers so should also be isolated from both the plants and connected through high speed network like fiber optic (if possible).
• In case of failure, the connected computers will be storing data in server 2 and 3, therefore, backup is happening in realtime and case of failure in any plant or both the plants data can be easily recovered from server 2 and 3.
• Pls follow the arrow to understand the data flow.

A suggestion: since it is not mentioned whether the plant has a cloud storage purchased, it is always recommended to have a cloud storage place for disaster recovery. If there is a cloud storage available, it should be placed between server 2 and 3 for further backup in the cloud space.