May 27, 2005
Memo for: Business Continuity Plan Management
Committee
Subject: Minutes of the May 27, 2005 Meeting
1.
A meeting of the Business Continuity Plan Management Committee was held on
Friday, May 27, 2005, in Room 208 Cone Center.
2.
Attendance:
a.
Present: Diana Gann, Carter Heath , Tony Hoppa, Dane Hughes, Debra Joyce, Doug Pierce, Mark
Reynolds, Morgan Roseborough, Wally Seigler, Darin Spease, Gary Stinnett, Tom
York
b.
Absent:
Dixie Airey, Kathi Baucom, Susan Brooks, Randy Duncan, Barbara Edwards, Ted
Elling, Ray Galleno, John Gandar, Barry Godlewski, Lee Gray, William Harper,
Jon Hawn, Bill Hill, Michelle Howard, Phil Jones, Tom Lamb, Marlon Lynch, John
Mack, Laura Simic, Doug Thomas
3.
Main topics / issues:
a.
Presentation by First Restoration Services: Peter Dineen,
Marketing Director for First Restoration Services (FRS), briefed the committee
on the various services his company can provide to UNC Charlotte following a
disaster. These include: water extraction, carpet drying, mold and
mildew remediation, document drying, hard drive recovery, boarding up buildings. The “Pre-disaster Agreement” between FRS and
UNC Charlotte, gives us priority for their services ahead of other
organizations and individuals without such agreements. A survey team from FRS will visit UNC
Charlotte in the near future to familiarize themselves with the campus and facilities
in order to prepare themselves for a timely response to our emergency needs. Peter left a CD ROM with his presentation for
use by any interested department at the University.
b. Resource Tracker
Contact and Recovery Item Status: Morgan presented charts depicting the current
status of individual emergency contact information and component documents of
the Business Continuity Plan. In
addition, he showed the status as of the last meeting. Most individual contact information and the COOPs are now approaching the 180 day mark since their last
update/confirmation. We are now entering
the semi-annual update window with a goal of having all individual contact
information and COOPs verified or updated by the end
of August.
There
is a new version of Resource Tracker (now called CPO Tracker) on the Citrix
server. Authorized users should collect
updated information on individuals and COOPs and
refresh the tracking dates in CPO Tracker.
Information is Current for 197 of 312 Team Members as of May 25, 2005 Of 86 Recovery Items: 22 are Past Due; 0 are Not Established as of 25 May, 2005
c.
Impact Analysis of April 19 Computer Network Outage: Following the
April 19th interruption of central computing services, Morgan
distributed a survey designed to capture the impacts of the outage on campus
operations. The survey consisted of 10
questions. Responses were received from
over 40 departments and offices across the University. A summary of the responses follows:
(1) Good
News
·
The length of the
outage did not require BCP’s to be implemented for
any Critical Business Process. There
were many reports of alternative means of operations in lieu of computer-based
methods.
·
There was no
significant damage/loss to physical or intellectual property. Some students lost projects or papers and
many others simply lost time in which to accomplish these tasks.
·
There was no
significant $$ cost to repair/resume operations.
(2) Bad News
·
Some significant weaknesses
were identified in the central computer facility, particularly regarding power
distribution and backup systems.
·
Although there
was an emergency generator and a UPS, these backup power systems did not help
in this situation due to the location of the short circuit.
·
All the servers are
in one room, fed by the same source of power.
This prevented their redundancy features from being employed, since they
all crashed at once.
·
It was reported
that there was no backup for VOIP. [However,
both Dane Hughes and Carter Heath explained that the only feature that was
disabled was voice mail.]
·
Distance
instruction was shut down during this time.
Some distance classes had to be rescheduled, but some were linked to a
specific time window which resulted in lost class time.
·
During the
outage, the University web site was out of operation. This resource was not available to provide information
to internal or external audiences. [This
is an open issue that was identified over a year ago.]
(3) Recommendations
from Respondents:
·
We need an alternate
web page host to take over when our primary system is out of order. This single page can describe the situation,
provide an estimated time to recovery, and provide other information to
students, faculty, staff, and visitors.
·
Separate/distribute
the Banner servers (and others) so that they can take over for each other.
·
Need a backup for
IP phone/fax. As stated above, the phone
and fax are backed up by analog telephone.
Voicemail is the only component affected by this kind of interruption.
·
We need to have a
backup computing facility. This is
related to the second bullet, but may also include redundancy for email, web
site and other network functions.
·
Don’t tie all
copy machines to the network. When the
network was interrupted, the copiers connected to the network were non-functional.
·
Load basic
applications on users’ PC’s. [Some users
believed that, because applications are delivered by the Novell Application
Launcher, they were not available on their PC during the network outage. Carter Heath explained that this is not the
case. Once the application is moved to
the PC’s desktop, it becomes resident on that PC and will continue to function in
spite of a network outage.]
·
Store critical
files on C: drive or CD ROM, so you don’t lose them in case of a network
outage. [Carter Heath explained that,
while this may be appropriate for personal working files, certain University information
and data may not be copied from the network to other storage means due to
statutes and/or regulations (such as HIPPA).]
d. Proposed date for
the next meeting: 10 AM, Friday, July 29, 2005, Room 208 Cone
Center.
4. The meeting adjourned at 11:05 AM.
Director, Business Continuity
Planning
UNC