We deliver IT resiliency, business continuity solutions and services for campus applications administered by Berkeley IT, both locally and at UC Berkeley’s fail-over site, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). Business continuity is defined as keeping the enterprise functional no matter where it is being executed, locally or remotely, and ensures that the enterprise functionality will be available to its customers and users at all times. There are three components to business continuity:
- Resiliency – critical systems, infrastructure and business functions are engineered to be resilient to disruptions via redundancy and/or spare capacity.
- Recovery – restoring infrastructure and business functionality, full or partial after an outage.
- Contingency – organizational capacity to work during system outages through documentation, planning, testing and regular exercises and drills.
Services
In addition to managing UC Berkeley’s IT business continuity, bIT Business Continuity Services consults with campus departments, units and colleges to build robust business continuity plans.
- IT Business Continuity Consulting – Consultation is available to the campus community regarding IT disaster recovery and IT business continuity solutions. This includes facilitated interaction between IT infrastructure teams, application/functional technical managers and campus business owners regarding IT business continuity planning and services. We also assist campus continuity planners in having active and up-to-date IT business continuity plans.
- Business Impact Assessment – We are available to to perform risk and readiness assessments related to IT business continuity. This process helps identify and document risks which are inherent and exist in campus departments, colleges, or units, with a focus on critical organizational and functional factors and related IT systems capability.
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
The SDSC currently acts as UC Berkeley's Disaster Recovery Hot Site (DRHS) in a situation when UC Berkeley's Data Center at Warren Hall becomes unavailable. SDSC would continue to act as the DRHS until that time when the Warren Hall Data Center once again becomes functional. UC Berkeley is set to fail-over to SDSC during any campus-wide disaster (e.g. a major earthquake with substantial property damage, the 1991 Oakland Hills firestorm) once declared by the Chancellor’s Office or Chancellor’s Cabinet. However, smaller or localized disasters may not require a full-scale campus disaster response. The Office of Emergency Management (OEM), has a detailed description of various situations and scenarios that may elicit a declared emergency. Visit OEM for additional information and resources.
If the UC Berkeley Data Center becomes non-functional, the decision to activate the UC Berkeley Disaster Recovery Hot Site (DRHS) at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) is made either by UC Berkeley's Chancellor's Cabinet, the CIO or the Information Technology Leadership Group (ITLG). Because of the cost of failing-over to our DRHS as well as the cost of returning to Warren Hall, the decision to move to SDSC would only happen if Warren Hall is out for three weeks or longer. The decision to fail-over is dependent on the scale of the disaster and could be amended at any time.
During a declared emergency, OEM has a procedure in place to activate an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and essential campus departments as Emergency Support Functions (ESF). bIT is part of one such ESF and has a detailed disaster preparedness plan in place. ESFs can be activated independently of each other. For example, if UC Berkeley’s Warren Hall Data Center becomes non-functional, the bIT ESF can be activated.
Catalyst
Catalyst is a vendor-supported SAAS tool to document IT Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans for your service and application. These plans include actionable, response, and recovery capabilities.
When should Catalyst be used?
One of the requirements in IS-12 is to document IT Business Continuity Plan for your critical application and service. These plans are reviewed and approved annually by service owners and providers. Service providers use their documented plans to recover their service/application from an emergency or disaster situation.
