Notice—Charging for Disaster Recovery to Be Delayed
Applications using CIT’s disaster recovery service will not be charged, beginning October 1, as previously announced. Two reasons contributed to our decision to temporarily delay the introduction of charges for this service.
Hot Site Test Took Place During "Real Disaster" Conditions
During a test at the remote hot site on July 21, 1998, two problems occurred: the tele-communications link between NIHnet and the hot site was extremely slow, and a late afternoon thunderstorm knocked out routers at Parklawn. We were able to recover quickly from the latter. Although these "real disasters" made application testing a little longer than expected, the hot site test was a success.
The Contract for Off-Site Services Is Being Recompeted
We are currently acquiring a new contract for disaster recovery services and expect it to be in place for fiscal year 1999. The new contract might require modification of disaster recovery procedures by both critical application owners and the NIH Computer Center. Once the contract is in place, we will reevaluate the contract’s resources and the critical applications’ requirements in order to set appropriate fees for the service.
Watch future issues of Interface for announcements of the new charges and effective dates. (See article on disaster recovery in Interface 205, March 1998.)