Towns host each other's recovery data

 

Connecting state and local government leaders

Two Tennessee towns find a COOP solution

Setting up a fully-functional backup site to maintain continuity of operations is an expensive undertaking, especially for a smaller government body with few extra dollars to spend. The city of Maryville, Tenn. has found an intriguing solution: It uses the excess space in the data center of a neighboring town, Alcoa, Tenn., about 3 miles away. And in exchange, Alcoa uses Maryville's site for its own COOP site, according to Terry McCoy, Maryville's director of information technology.

Despite a modest population of 30,000, Maryville has some pretty stringent COOP requirements, McCoy explained, not the least because it acts as an electricity provider for local residents on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA requires the town's billing system to go through audits under the Statement on Auditing Standards 70 protocols. One requirement of SAS 70 is to have documented off-site backup of operations.

In addition to this requirement, the IT department also needed a way to back up 2,200 work stations, mostly from the city's schools, but also municipal office desktop computers and the police force's laptops. The IT department oversees all the databases and file systems for the city. All in all, setting up an off-site data center would cost the city at least about $50,000, McCoy noted.

So McCoy looked for a less expensive work-around, and found an answer in the neighboring town, Alcoa. Alcoa also had the TVA mandate for off-site operations, so the two towns decided to house each other's back-ups. In this way, if Maryville's primary data center went offline for some reason, operations could easily be picked up a few miles away from Alcoa's facilities, and vice-versa.

One advantage of the plan was that much of what the towns needed to make it work was already in place, McCoy said. The towns shared a fiber-optic network, which connected all the office buildings and schools of both cities. McCoy's teams also started using virtualization, which allows them to spin up or move around servers as they are needed. Finally, the town invested in a 24 Terabyte Pillar Axiom 500 Fibre Channel-based Storage Area Network, from Pillar Data Systems to house the data.

The combination of virtualization, high-speed fiber optic network and the SAN brought a new flexibility to the town's operations, McCoy said.

Take the schools, for instance. Each school stored all the materials on one of two servers, each with direct attached storage. Each time a server would go down, the IT staff would have to go set up a new server, and install all the appropriate software, such as the GroupWorks educational program.

While the IT department rebuilt the server, which could take up to two days, the school would be without educational materials. At one point, the primary and backup drive of one of the servers failed simultaneously, and the IT department came perilously close to losing all the data.

Now, all these servers are virtualized and run from a cluster, using Novell Cluster Services. So when a physical machine goes down, the virtual server can be moved to another location with very little downtime. Moving to virtualization also saved in hardware costs. Since newly purchased servers would no longer require hard drives for storage, it could save $7,000 to  $8,000 per server, according to the city.

By virtualizing much of the town's operational software it could easily be moved around if need be. This also helped in COOP planning. If something were to happen to the Maryville data center, everything could be run from another location.

Using nearby Alcoa made sense, since they execute many of the same services, such as collecting utility bills and tax bills. "If anything ever happened to one of  their buildings, then we could send our cashiers over to their buildings," McCoy said. When Maryville purchased its new 24 Terabyte SAN from Pillar, it sold its legacy 12 terabyte SAN, also from Pillar,  to Alcoa, which didn't require as much capacity. The towns are now in the process of mirroring each other's material.

"With the virtual environments, we're trying to make it to the point where our server could be brought up over there and vice versa," he said.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.