We are entering the month of October, which leads to cooler weather, pumpkin spice everything, and Halloween. In higher education, October is the month that most of us are looking forward to. This is not due to the pumpkin spice or cooler weather but due to things in our realm ‘slowing down’ a little; please note the quotes around slowing down. August and September are when classes are starting for most of us, while November and December are when we start planning small winter break projects or even our summer projects, this leaves October as the time we can ‘breathe’ a little. October may be a scary time but it shouldn’t be a scary time for our technology. In fact, its a perfect time to put the scaries to rest.
Disaster Recovery
In the IT realm, they are always looking at or should be looking at, their disaster recovery (DR) plans. With AV being IT we should be focused on our DR plans as well. AV has become a critical part of education and we should have a plan that prevents a long downtime. What should this plan look like? Each situation will look different but a DR plan should include things such as code recovery and hardware replacement.
Code Recovery
Without code, our AV equipment is just boxes sitting there. With that said what will you do if that code stops working? If you have a backup of the code then this isn’t a problem. If you do not have a backup of the code then this can be a scary situation. With no backup you are left with two options, write new code or try to find the installer to see if they have a backup of the code. If you move forward with new code then not only is there not time to write the new code but also the frustration of debugging the system. Meanwhile, the system is not doing what you need it to do. Our users are getting frustrated. If we go with tracking down the installation company then we are at the mercy of them finding the code and hoping that the code is the right version.
Now not only do we need to back up the code but we need to know where that backup is, that the backup is recoverable and most important that the backup is documented with the version number.
Hardware Replacement
Having hardware replacement can be good and a problem for our DR plans. The good part of having hardware replacement is if something goes wrong you can swap it and get the space up and running again. The hardware replacement allows the quick recovery of a space because we can pull out the equipment that is having an issue and put another one in.
The problem with hardware replacement is that the equipment takes up space and its money sitting on the shelf. We know money and space are always tight in higher education so having spare equipment taking up money and space can be scary mainly if we never need to use that spare equipment. We also need to make sure that the spare equipment is kept up-to-date with the firmware, patches, and code version. If we allow the spare equipment to fall behind on the swapping out the gear becomes longer and not the smooth quick transition we would want.
Concluding
Having a disaster recovery plan does not need to scare us. A good DR plan will allow a smooth transition if anything goes wrong. We hope nothing will go wrong but it becomes that safety net that we need. This is only if we have a good plan and know how to follow it. If we do not have a plan and even worst don’t know how to follow the plan then it is useless.
I leave you with this if you do not have a DR plan currently, use the month of October to develop that plan and make sure you are always reviewing it.