Initially if a serious disaster were to compromise several key computing facilities on campus it would have taken 3-4 weeks for UNI to have those systems back online. In discussions several years ago IT Administrative Information Systems was challenged to find a way of reducing that number to 2 – 3 days without more funding. We are now mid-way in implementing the plan to accomplish this, by moving nearly all of UNI’s test systems to the ITF (Iowa Technology Facility) in Coralville. This provides us a platform for replicating our production systems that reside on UNI's campus to an offsite location with very little additional expense.
As of the summer of 2018 all test systems and related hardware are in the ITF. All production Oracle databases are replicated and maintained at the ITF in near real time, so in the event of a disaster the databases are ready to go.
The next phases of this project call for the replication of application and web servers, so that if a disaster strikes, we promote the replicated database to be live, and the application servers are ready to go.
Tests of this strategy thus far have been very positive, a full test for authentication is scheduled for later in the summer of 2018.
This is a great example of how the Regents IT organizations are collaborating in effective ways.
Contact: Kevan Forest
