please help me - PBX Info :: Your Free PBX, PABX and Telephone Information Resource

ride · 10-14-2003, 02:11 AM

i have a few last minute questions about my final project. we were discussing disaster recovery plans and had some questions/multiple ideas. first we were advised to use switch redirect. when using switch redirect do the calls get redirected to a completely different site, remote site? is this practical, maintaining a whole other remote site for back up use. another thing we came up with was running i guess tdm and voip side by side as disaster plan. we want the main part of the site to run using voip. we thought if its possible to run say a few tdm sets as designated recovery phones. running pots trunks side by side with the t1 trunks and have the pots trunks connecting just for the tdm phone sets. or one other thing we came up with was having the t1's come from one c.o. and have the pots trunks coming from a seperate c.o. as for file back up we thought of outsourcing it to a third party. does this sound like a decent back up plan? i hope you understand what im trying to say. thank you for any help.

Pirates_Ghost · 10-14-2003, 10:21 AM

Your plans sound good on paper, but let me put it as simply as possible.

Think 9/11/01!

I'm working for a company who lost a lot of people in the WTC loss, as well as a PBX (ok, 2, but who's counting)
At any rate....
Take into acount, while your idea of running TDM side by side with VoIP is a good one, why would you house it in the same location? What happens if that building goes BOOM? No disater recovery if you lose the SOLE site where both your main and DR systems are, right?

You would almost asuredly need to have a plan in place where, if need be, you could shift calls to an off site location, such as a remote office, or some sort of Answering service, even. Anything so your clients can still contact you, even if it's just to be told that the building is gone.

My 2 cents.

**Chas2002** · 10-14-2003, 12:58 PM

Your plan is solid...

Maybe it would help to think of what a Disaster Plan really is. A Disaster Plan is comprised of two actions:
A. Disaster Preparedness
and
B. Disaster Recovery.

Let's break your plan apart and perform a simple but common disaster.............

Your Plan..........

Disaster Preparedness (Site A)
It seems as though you've focused and have prepared the local site by;
A. Determining Key personnel positions and numbers,
B. Determining acceptable outage timetables,
B. Side-by-side VOIP and TDM applications,
C. Warehousing of data by a third party contractor,
D. Switch Redirect plans.

Site A is about as good as you're going to get - in my opinion to attempt any further redundancy at Site A is a misappropriation of valuable DP dollars....

Disaster Preparedness Alternate (Site B)
Is it needed? In my opinion - yes. It really depends on your Business Model...

Notes about the Alternate site:
A. This should be (if possible), a functional system within your day-to-day business model,
B. This will be your Switch Redirect location,
C. Keep this site simple and sweet,
D. This site should be physically and logically (referencing layers here) removed and detached from Site A.

1a. Site B can be used as an overflow site for Call centers, Attendant positions, or used as an in-house Tech center. At any rate - since you will need to build it you may as well try to use it...
2b. To give you the greatest scope of recovery - Site B should be on a separate CO than Site A.
3c. This is a Temporary Site - thus do away with any application that is not vital to your business model,
4d. Refer to 2b.

A simple test -
In small town USA, the streets are being worked on - BAM!!! - your incoming cables (fiber/copper) to Site A are cut...
Miss Utility states that it will take approximately 12 hours to re-instate service.
Does your plan cover this common disaster?
What if it was 24 hours? 36 hours?
How do the times compare to your timetable outage criteria?

Also - you state that you would want your T1 Service from (1) CO and your POTS service from another CO - I don't think you'll find that is a common setup. Usually one CO feeds a business building.

Post back if you have any questions..............

**Chas2002** · 10-14-2003, 02:12 PM

Hey ride -
Attached is a working CPM (I've removed or xxxx'd out the sensitive info).

My business model isn't as robust as yours - but I think you'll find this helpful in your planning.

Good luck on your project and let us know how it goes..........

Chas2002

Opps - I will not upload ---

Rixride - Getting an error on upload.

Quote:

Upload Error: Could not upload Attachment to ././modules/PNphpBB2/files/cpm.doc.

The doc size is 4.03MB

[/u]

**rixride** · 10-14-2003, 02:57 PM

Try zipping it up in a ZIP File. I set an attachement size limit so our Server doesn't crash with too many attachments but we haven't run into to many problems yet so I may leave it open for a while.

but in the mean time, try uploading it as a zip file.

**Chas2002** · 10-14-2003, 03:11 PM

Uploading zip file...........

Upload quota reached....

dadms · 10-19-2003, 02:11 AM

Check with your local or LD carrier. It is possible that they can redirect your services automatically when you carrier/lines go down. Its called EMERGENCY REDIRECT SERVICE. This has becom quite popular since 9/11.

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