{"id":471,"date":"2012-10-29T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T11:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/blogs\/paul\/post\/When-the-going-gets-tough-the-tough-hide-under-the-table.aspx"},"modified":"2017-04-13T11:41:12","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T18:41:12","slug":"when-the-going-gets-tough-the-tough-hide-under-the-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/when-the-going-gets-tough-the-tough-hide-under-the-table\/","title":{"rendered":"When the going gets tough, the tough hide under the table"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">That&#39;s a quote from one of my favorite comedy shows, <\/font><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0526726\/quotes\" target=\"_blank\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Blackadder<\/font><\/a><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">.&nbsp;<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">With Hurricane Sandy bearing down on the North East Coast of the US today, whether you&#39;re in its path or not, it&#39;s a good time to consider what your reaction will be when faced with a disaster that affects the data you&#39;re responsible for.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Will you be hiding under the table or calmly and confidently working through your disaster recovery plan to bring your company&#39;s data life-blood back online? Hopefully the latter.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">For those who will be working through power-outages and data loss today, and as food for thought for those who won&#39;t, I&#39;ve brain-dumped a quick&nbsp;list of some helpful&nbsp;questions, advice, and useful links around disaster recovery.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">In no particular order:<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Now is the time to move your on-site backups onto a different I\/O subsystem from the databases.&nbsp;<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Make sure you start gathering off-site backups before the incoming disaster strikes and communications and travel become difficult.&nbsp;<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Make sure you have a disaster recovery plan (see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/importance-of-having-a-good-disaster-recovery-plan\/\" target=\"_blank\">this blog post<\/a>), that&#39;s been tested (see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/importance-of-testing-your-disaster-recovery-plan\/\" target=\"_blank\">this blog post<\/a>), and that those on call have practiced. You shouldn&#39;t be learning the syntax for <font face=\"courier new,courier\">RESTORE<\/font> during a real disaster.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Don&#39;t assume that everyone will be online and pulling for the company. People&#39;s lives and families will come first. See <\/font><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/human-nature-is-a-significant-hurdle-to-successful-disaster-recovery\/\" target=\"_blank\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">this blog post<\/font><\/a><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">How will you all communicate if the land-lines and cell-phone towers are inoperable?<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">If you have to do a bare-metal install, where is the media? Do you have ISOs on a SAN somewhere? If not, download them now before communications drop out.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">If your data center is damaged, what&#39;s the alternate location to spin up some servers? For a small business, someone&#39;s garage will do in a pinch.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Don&#39;t forget that if the SAN is down, you can get 1TB drives at electronics stores &#8211; and they&#39;re better than nothing if you just want to get your business online again, albeit slowly.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">If your generators don&#39;t start, go to Home Depot and expense a few household generators to plug critical servers into. I&#39;ve seen this done. Make sure you know someone with a big pickup truck.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Make sure to enable instant file initialization on new instances before restoring databases from backups to save time.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Make sure you know the order which databases have to be restored, based on importance to the business.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Do you have the contact info for the on-call personnel from the server, networking, SAN, customer service, and any other teams you need to liaise with?<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Who is in control of the DR effort? Who decides whether&nbsp;to do one thing or another if there&#39;s disagreement?<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Who decides when to escalate?<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Who decides when to ask for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">third-party help<\/a>?<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Who needs to be kept informed of progress? Executives? Customers? Partners?<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">How to: <\/font><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/disaster-recovery-101-hack-attach-a-damaged-database\/\" target=\"_blank\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">hack attach a damaged database<\/font><\/a><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">How to: <\/font><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/disaster-recovery-101-backing-up-the-tail-of-the-log\/\" target=\"_blank\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">take tail-of-the-log backups, including using a separate instance<\/font><\/a><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">How to: <\/font><a href=\"https:\/\/technet.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/ee677581.aspx\" target=\"_blank\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">recover from disasters using backups<\/font><\/a><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">.<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">How to: <\/font><a href=\"https:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/Areas\/Epx\/Content\/500.htm?aspxerrorpath=\/en-us\/library\/dd207003.aspx\" target=\"_blank\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">rebuild system databases<\/font><\/a><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">&nbsp;(2012, 2008R2, 2008)<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">How to: <\/font><a href=\"https:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/ms144259(v=SQL.90).aspx\" target=\"_blank\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">install 2005<\/font><\/a><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\"> (including system databases)<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n\t<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">How to: <\/font><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sql\/relational-databases\/backup-restore\/restore-the-master-database-transact-sql\" target=\"_blank\"><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">restore master<\/font><\/a><font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\"> (2012 through 2005)<\/font>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Basically the more prepared you can be, and the more eventualities you can think through, the more likely you&#39;ll be able to get back up and running within your downtime and data-loss SLAs.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Whatever happens over the next few days for those of you in Sandy&#39;s path, conduct a post-mortem to see what went right and wrong, and rework your HA\/DR plan accordingly.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">And don&#39;t forget that #sqlhelp on Twitter can be invaluable for advice.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<font face=\"verdana,geneva\" size=\"2\">Good luck out there!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#39;s a quote from one of my favorite comedy shows, Blackadder.&nbsp; With Hurricane Sandy bearing down on the North East Coast of the US today, whether you&#39;re in its path or not, it&#39;s a good time to consider what your reaction will be when faced with a disaster that affects the data you&#39;re responsible for. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disaster-recovery"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>When the going gets tough, the tough hide under the table - Paul S. 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