Re: data center space

["Jeff Hayward" <jeffhayward () gmail com>]

On 4/21/06, Jim Popovitch <jimpop () yahoo com> wrote:
> Five years after 9/11 you would think that people would have located
> business continuity ops much further away (assuming the businesses are
> based in NYC) than NJ.  I'm sure that regulations require them to be x
> miles or in another state.  But all things should considered... even the
> capability for major catastrophic incident(s) to affect primary and
> (nearby) secondary sites.


It's very unlikely that your business needs to plan for something that
affects more than about a 20-mile radius.  Events like earthquake or
hurricane, or even a nuclear disaster, are fairly localized.  For disasters
the optimum separation is about 30 miles*, which lets people who are not
involved in whatever happens to the primary (the other shifts) staff the
alternate in an emergency.  Add in cost of fiber, latency, etc., and 30
miles is just about perfect.

If your business continuity planning is telling folks anything else, I think
perhaps they're not getting what they think.

* unless it's just 30 miles further down the eq fault line or hurricane path
:-)  Local conditions change the rule of thumb as to exact
distance/direction.

-- Jeff