Oracle Magazine - September/October 2007 - Marcelo Machado

S4
Keeping disaster recovery current
Dell has completed its transformation
of its disaster recovery plans and processes—but
the effort will never be
entirely finished, says McGovern. Technologies,
business needs, and security
threats all continue to evolve, and Dell’s
disaster recovery policies and procedures
are designed to do the same.
For example, when a change is made
to an application, database, or data
center, disaster recovery capabilities
are updated as well. New applications
must be engineered for recoverability.
Dell actively monitors and manages
disaster recovery compliance, and
disaster recovery documentation for
each system has to be updated every
90 days.
The company also maintains a strict
policy that calls for all of its more than
250 Class 1 applications to be tested
at least once a year. “That’s not negotiable—it’s
mandatory,” says Higdon.
Dell has created a disaster recovery
scorecard that lets the company keep
close track of testing and documentation
status. The card is used by the
IT group and the CIO, and is eventually
shared with the corporate audit function
and the audit committee of the board
of directors. “You can see how serious
we are about this,” says Higdon.
The Dell disaster recovery initiative
has put the company in good position to
ensure business continuity—and keep
supporting customers—in the event of
a serious interruption at its data center.
“The goal is to do a complete failover
to the disaster recovery site within four
hours, and we’ve been hitting that mark.
In our last test, we actually failed over
all the applications in scope in less than
an hour,” says Higdon. And as an unexpected
benefit, the company has seen
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its insurance premiums go down,
because its carrier has recognized the
value of Dell’s disaster recovery efforts.
“This initiative shows how costeffective,
standards-based servers can
be used to support a strategic, enterprise
approach to disaster recovery,”
says McGovern. “Just as important,
it has enabled us to build disaster
recovery into our culture. That’s key to
keeping disaster recovery in sync with
the business. In today’s world, disaster
recovery is not a ‘nice to have’—it’s a
‘must have.’ And we’ve been able to
make it a part of everyday life at Dell.”
July 2007. Printed in the U.S.A. Dell, the DELL logo, and PowerEdge are trademarks of Dell Inc. Oracle is a registered
trademark of Oracle Corporation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Microsoft and Windows Server are registered
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© 2007 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell Inc. is
strictly forbidden. For more information, please contact Dell Inc.
Dell and Oracle have a long collaborative relationship based in large part
on the similar long-term visions of both companies. Oracle’s Grid Computing
strategy focuses on delivering flexible, reliable database throughput; the dynamic
provisioning of database workloads on grids of industry-standard servers; and
the ability to easily add more capacity to grids. Dell’s Scalable Enterprise vision
complements that strategy with its focus on standardizing the core elements of
IT infrastructure to deliver superior value, and ultimately enabling customers to
simplify operations, improve utilization, and scale effectively.
With those complementary visions in mind, Dell and Oracle work together on
a number of fronts. For example, experts from both companies have collaborated
to develop a number of pre-engineered, tested, and validated Intel-based Oracle
database solutions on Red Hat Linux ® and Microsoft ® Windows Server ® 2003.
Dell and Oracle test and support the entire solution stack—servers, storage,
switches, operating systems, and Oracle Database software—giving companies
a cost-effective solution to legacy data center technologies. In addition, Dell
Services and Oracle Consulting Services work together to provide fixed-fee and
custom services designed to accelerate implementation and help organizations
make the best use of the technology.
The two companies also have a firsthand view of the effectiveness of these
technologies: Both use Dell and Oracle platforms in their own operations. Oracle
develops and tests much of its software on Dell PowerEdge servers and relies
on more than 20,000 Dell Linux servers to power key elements of its Global IT
operations. Similarly, Dell entrusts several mission-critical business systems to
PowerEdge servers running Oracle Database 10g—including not only its EMEA
(Europe, Middle East, and Africa) order-management system, but also its North
American supply chain database.
Resources
Dell PowerEdge servers
www.dell.com/PowerEdge
Dell and Oracle Database 10g
www.dell.com/oracle10g
Oracle and Dell
www.oracle.com/dell
www.dell.com/oracle