Components of Continuous IT Availability & Disaster Tolerant Computing: 2007 IEEE Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security: Enhancing Critical Infrastructure Dependability

This paper provides a review of the components of disaster tolerant computing and communications and reviews the current state in light of recent man-made terrorist events. The technology, process and human resource challenges of traditional disaster recovery approaches to disaster preparedness are outlined. The paper examines the relationships between disaster tolerant systems, Information Technology (IT) application availability and executive level management visibility necessary for successful system operations in the event of a catastrophic disaster. The risks of IT application downtime attributable to the increasing dependence on critical information technology applications and infrastructure are explored. Opportunities to extend complex systems independence analysis to the private business sector, and disaster tolerance are explored. A general approach for disaster tolerance is reviewed which mitigates unplanned downtime through a disciplined approach of IT infrastructure design based on redundancy and distributed components, with special attention given to the ability of executive level management to comprehend the value of uptime of an application and make appropriate capital investment.