I had 1 client that had to be back up and running within 30 seconds to the disaster recovery center. They had calculated downtime as costing them just over $100,000 per minute! They spent almost $10,000,000 getting their HA/FT/DR stuff setup and tested. They spent almost $1,000,000 just in Citrix NetScalers to ensure their users would be automatically routed to the DR site when needed.
I also have another customer that from January 2 thru April 30 must be up and running with access to all data with "2 to 4 hours". After April 30, they have a 5 day timeframe to be back running with access to all data. Their HA/FT/DR costs are a lot less than the first customer. Webster From: Raper, Jonathan - Eagle [mailto:jra...@eaglemds.com] Subject: RE: Consultants "I'm not sure what my requirements are.... which is why I want to hire a consultant/consulting engineer to help me figure out what my needs are" My $0.02....Forget hiring a consultant for now. If you're dead set on getting a consultant, feel free to email me off-list. My rates are reasonable. You need to sit down with the business owners and explain: These are our applications: App1 App2 App3 These are our data sets: Dataset1 Dataset2 Dataset3 Then you need to ask the questions of the business owners/department heads for each application/dataset: What happens to the business if this specific app/dataset is unavailable for (as an example): 1 hour 4 hours 1 day 2 days 3 days 1 week 2 weeks 1 month You also need to list weaknesses and vulnerabilities of your network/data/applications/etc, which may alter the perspective of your business owners (particularly for anything that may be unique to your environment). Then ask, "What does it cost the business per hour/day/week in terms of lost revenue or productivity dollars if this application/dataset is unavailable?" This gives you a framework within which you can come up with a reasonable budget for your solution. THEN, MAYBE it will be time for you to hire a consultant. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
