ITS Disaster Recovery ensures the continuity and rapid restoration of enterprise systems and university data in the event of a major disruption, such as hardware failure, cyberattack, natural disaster, or system outage. These services are designed to protect institutional data, minimize downtime, and support the university’s mission-critical operations.
Overview of Service
Disaster Recovery (DR) is managed by Information Technology Services (ITS) and include planning, infrastructure design, backup and replication, testing, and recovery execution. The service covers all enterprise systems, including student information systems, financial platforms, HR systems, research data, and administrative applications.
Key Features:
- Disaster recovery planning and documentation
- Data backup and replication across secure environments
- Failover and recovery procedures for enterprise systems
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) alignment
- Testing and validation of recovery processes
- Coordination with business continuity and security teams
Benefits:
- Rapid restoration of critical systems and data
- Reduced operational downtime and impact
- Protection against data loss and corruption
- Compliance with institutional and regulatory requirements
- Confidence in recovery readiness across departments
Service Details
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Core Activities:
- Develop and maintain disaster recovery plans for enterprise systems
- Perform regular backups and offsite replication
- Monitor system health and readiness for recovery
- Conduct disaster recovery drills and simulations
- Provide support during actual recovery events
- Collaborate with departments to align DR with business continuity plans
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Service Hours:
Disaster recovery infrastructure is monitored 24/7. Emergency response is available for critical incidents.
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Associated Platforms:
University data centers, backup platforms, virtualization environments, enterprise applications and all research computing environments.
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Performance Metrics:
- Recovery time and success rates
- Backup completion and verification rates
- Frequency of DR testing and plan updates
- Compliance with RTO/RPO targets
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Collaboration:
Managed by ITS Infrastructure and Operations teams in coordination with university departments, business continuity planners, and data stewards.
Boundaries and Constraints
- DR services apply only to university-managed systems and data.
- Recovery capabilities depend on system architecture and backup frequency.
- Departments must participate in planning and testing to ensure alignment.
- DR does not replace business continuity planning but complements it.