Best Practices: SG DR Site

Posted April 15, 2019

by cliff

In 2005 hurricane Katrina reminded the IT community that distance between your production and DR site alone does not guarantee your DR infrastructure is safe.  Katrina had an area of effect spanning hundreds of km and caused widespread power outages in six states. So, what options do Singapore IT Managers have on an island that’s just 50km from coast to coast?  Our suggestion is that you need to go back to fundamentals and make a risk based assessment of your production site, and then choose a DR site with a different risk profile within the exogenous (non-IT related) constraints of budget, policies and regulations.

What this means is that it may make perfect sense from an IT standpoint to host your DR infrastructure outside of Singapore, but due to the sensitive nature of your data and the difference in data privacy laws from country to country you may be uninclined to let your data leave Singapore.  Remember, if a disaster actually happens and have to fail over to the DR site, are you comfortable running your IT (and supporting it) in a different country? For many companies the answer will be “yes”, but for those who answer “no”, what are their options?  We will explore the options in a series of blog posts on best practices in Singapore.