BCP/DR Primer – Part 5 – Test the plan, don’t plan the test

In the final post in the BCP/DR Primer series we are wrapping up with the final task in BCP program; testing the BCP plan. Another piece of debate is the semantics of the word “test”. Many BCP programs will refer to these as “exercises” rather that “tests” but regardless of the label we apply, this … Read more

PowerCLI – Globally setting VM Tools time sync and version upgrade options

Recently I was presented with the need to change the time synchronization and VM Tools installation options for a number of VM guest machines. While this is not challenging to do through the UI, I’m a big fan of doing everything possible through PowerCLI. And if you have larger numbers of machines in your VMware … Read more

BCP/DR Primer – Part 4 – Application Recovery Document and “The Plan”

So let’s review how we have come to this point in the process. In Part 1 we discussed the general strategy of the BCP program and the IT participation in the process. In Part 2 we moved into the definition of the BCP Tiers and the factors involved to begin mapping our systems and requirements. … Read more

BCP/DR Primer – Part 3 – The BCP Recoverability Matrix

In our last post we laid out the RPO and RTO of  a couple of systems to illustrate how we can map our systems into BCP tiers. Now that we have defined our current state of the core IT applications and services we will examine the requirements and limitations and define how we can maintain, … Read more