Computer Associates BABWBR1151S38 Implementation Guide - Page 31

Catastrophic Events Vault Security Considerations The vault should be isolated enough from your main facility to protect the off-site data from the kind of catastrophes you are prepared to guard against. Example: Vault Security Considerations ■ If earthquakes are the biggest threat you need to deal with, the vault should be in an earthquake-resistant building at some distance from your main site or even in another city or a different seismic zone. ■ If fire or local flooding is the danger, a storage room in an upper floor of the building across the street might be enough. Vault Accessibility Considerations Measures that isolate your data repository from your primary site also make it harder (and more expensive) to keep the data in the remote repository current. To be of use, off-site data has to be reasonably up-to-date, which means it has to be reasonably accessible. A vault in a distant city might protect the data against even the most extreme disasters, but it might be impractical to ship media there on a daily basis. Vault Expense Considerations In general, the more secure a vault is, the more expensive it is to use. You pay more for more secure storage facilities. It often takes longer to get media to and from these facilities. The more media you store off-site, the more you have to buy for your main site. Disaster Recovery Archive Considerations Because catastrophes will, by definition, strike your infrastructure as well as your backup media, you should assume that you will have to rebuild systems completely before you can start the actual data recovery. For this reason, you should always maintain the following off site: ■ Media elements that contain bootable operating systems for the CA ARCserve Backup servers. ■ A current, complete backup of the file systems, databases, and mail servers supported by CA ARCserve Backup. You may want to include CA ARCserve Backup distribution media and a text file that lists your hardware configuration parameters. Chapter 2: Planning Storage Environments 31