Disaster Recovery

[dnilsson]

Our firm is putting together a "what if it all burns down" contingency plan, and one of the questions is how to we maintain a minimal level of access to our Revit files.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a strategy? We've come up with Remote Desktop or VPN (don't know if this would even work for 25 users), or a remote facility (like a training center we could use for a day or two) but I wonder if there are other possibilities out there?

Our leased computers are coming up for retirement and there was a suggestion that the company buy them and send them home with everyone so we know everyone can run Revit, then we just have to work out access to the files. Seems like overkill though.

There will be on offsite server that mirrors the onsite one, so the data is preserved, we just need a way to access it.

[bbeck]

I'd have to say that so long as the data is replicated and secure off-site that's put you ahead of more then 80% of the firms around. I'm with a 40-man firm with two (2) offices 1-mile apart. We have servers at both locations mirroring each other with RAID 5 hard drive arrays. Our thought has always been that if one site were to drop into a black hole we would just go out, buy the new equipment, rebuild the subnet on one of our BDC's and be back up in less then one day from our other location. That crowds the staff together into one location but is just short term. We have a 10 seat VPN license software but to carry 25 seats like your firm would need for a disaster you hope never comes seems like over kill. The problems I've experienced with staff tunneling in via a secure VPN and the added cost of licenses for all users would make me shy away from that option. Also, 25 VPN's coming into any site will require some thought into bandwidth issues on both ends of the tunnel. I've not tried worksharing Revit projects and "saving to central" "reload latest" across our connection. But for stand-alone Revit projects it still seems slow. We run three (3) T-1's trunked together and in general that feels slow when you're used to 100mb LAN speeds. So, no real helpful ideas here, just more of a "what else" to watch out for.

[LRaiz]

I meant to mention that there will be on offsite server that mirrors the onsite one, so the data is preserved, we just need a way to access it.
If the data is preserved then you are 99.9% done. In case of disaster you are probably going to get new equipment anyway. Then someone will eigher prisically bring back up disks for copying or you will replicate the data over WAN. I would not worry to much about providing a long term access to remote servers for day to day work activities.

[randolph.fritz102047]

"Our leased computers are coming up for retirement and there was a suggestion that the company buy them and send them home with everyone so we know everyone can run Revit, then we just have to work out access to the files."

Unless you really, really, really trust the whole firm with confidential client info--and unless your clients aren't potential subjects of industrial espionage, I think this unwise. At least, if you do this, use crytographic security on those computers. Besides, you'd have to buy a lot of Revit licenses.

[dnilsson]

Thanks for everyone's thoughts. The issue as it was presented to me is, what if there is a catastrophic event at the office two days before a major clients project is slated to go out the door? Is there a way to pull it together enough to get 24-48 hours of work out of a "backup" system. But we would still have no printing ability, so I wonder how far you take an idea like this. The powers that be figure that the IT staff would be 100% occupied trying to get new equipment set up in a temporary office, so whatever we do needs to be quick and easy to initiate, hence the remote desktop idea.

The inital question was "Since we're building this beast of a server anyway, what would we have to add in order to run 20 sessions fo Revit at once?" I was, and remain, at a loss to answer that question.

I'm glad we're thinking about things like this, I just don't know if there is really an answer.

[randolph.fritz102047]

Ah. There are companies that make a business of providing shared backup data centers--you might look into those.