|
Our Partners
Customer Case StudiesComing soon
Great Online Print Technology |
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery PlanOverviewFilePrint has a strong business continuity and disaster recovery model to ensure the lowest impact on our customer SLA. FilePrint has a formal change procedure for each new business decision to evaluate the impact on the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan. Any issues are raised at monthly meetings and addressed, with the plan being updated. This plan assesses the potential risks to business continuity, then each threat is addressed in three sections, prevention, reporting and resolution. Whilst not exclusively limited to the list below, these are the risks most likely to occur, in perceived order of likeliness:
Malicious Software Attack Prevention: Layered Firewall Array, Antivirus software, secure logins, operation on non-Microsoft technology. Reporting: Formally through software logs, these are dealt with by our Data centre staff. Increased Demand Prevention: All technology allows either seamless expansion, hot swap, or clustering. Reporting: Formal software logging reporting either servers running at high percentage or saturation of connectivity. Resolution: The three key areas for demand are: hardware performance, connectivity, print partners. The hardware is generally hot swappable, meaning larger/faster processors, memory or hard disks can be installed. The current servers are running with 1 processor, this can be expanded to 8. In addition additional servers can be added into the existing cluster with no impact on service. The current bandwidth is 10 MB, but this can be instantly expanded to 100MB or 1 GB with 45 days notice. FilePrint's printers are effectively clustered too, with the ability to manually load balance. Software malfunction Prevention: The software used by FilePrint is all industry standard:
FilePrint runs established stable versions of these programs. If the software is upgraded, it is first done on a development platform and thoroughly tested before the update occurs on the working system. As the servers are mirrored, if a software solution fails, then the server will fail-over and the other fully operational system takes over. Reporting: Software monitors each application to ensure that it is working correctly. If the software detects a failure then the support team are immediately notified via SMS. Resolution: Generally a re-boot of the server is sufficient to resolve any issue. If this is not the case FilePrint holds various backup versions and a complete 'clean' install. Server malfunction Prevention: All servers are IBM X series, which are rack mounted and specifically designed to support web applications. These boxes support hot swap, hard disk mirroring and built in redundancy (such as power supplies and network cards). The servers have fail over meaning that if the primary fails, then the process will immediately swap to the secondary server. Reporting: Software monitors each server to ensure that it is working correctly. If the software detects a failure then the support team are immediately notified via SMS. Resolution: Depending on the issue, the failing component can be swapped out or if the problem is more serious, then a new 'clean' server can be patched in and the hard-disks swapped into it. This process means that a server can be brought back up from a major failure in less than 30 minutes, with out losing any service thanks to the back up server. Break in Primary connection to Internet or Catastrophic Failure of ISP Prevention: One of the key criterion for selecting the ISP, was for their ability to maintain a reliable service. Reporting: Software monitors will immediately inform FilePrint if the ISP fails. Resolution: FilePrint has two 10Mb load balanced diverse connections to the internet. This means that links go to two separate ISPs ensuring continuity if one should fail. The pipes are also load balanced using Novtec link line optimizers. For scalability these pipes can instantly be set to 100Mb, and if necessary with 45 days notice 1Gb. This solution ensures a bandwidth up time of 99.99%. Failure of Print Partner Prevention: As part of the license agreement FilePrint review the business continuity strategy of each prospective print partner. Reporting: If a print partner cannot fulfil an order, for what ever reason, then they are obliged to notify FilePrint, immediately. In addition each job failure will automatically be reported back to FilePrint via email. Resolution: FilePrint technology allows for the easy re-routing of print from one partner to another. As our print partners are scattered around the UK, it will always be possible to avoid local issues such as failed printers, flooding, paper supply problems, etc. Office Failure Prevention: FilePrint have purposely developed a stratagem of low reliance on the office location. The office is not collocated with the Data centre, with the only communications requirement being the internet. The vast majority of customer communication is via email, with all key contacts having alternative mobile phone numbers for staff. This planning effectively ensures that the catastrophic failure at the office will not effect the business process. Reporting: Not applicable. Resolution: Staff have the option of working from home or moving to ITPS's Business Continuity suite. Data Centre Failure Prevention: The data centre is configured to for high availability and is a Tier 2 facility, with these features:
Reporting: Failure will be reported via Datacentre and by recognition of loss of site. Resolution: The Data centre is purposed solely to support business critical processes and as such operates the most stringent policies. However, if there were a cataclysmic failure, such as building collapse, explosion, etc the FilePrint solution would fail. To ensure this cannot happen FilePrint are currently engaging with a Tier 1 provider in another city to ensure total continuity of service. |
|
|
