UC-Ohio State Alliance Promises IT Disaster Recovery Resources and Services

Posted: June 6, 2005

By Emmett Crawley

An alliance between the University of Cincinnati (UC) and The Ohio State University seeks to have disaster recovery data center facilities at the two institutions by December 2006. John Ellinger, senior director of OIT, said the data centers will be equipped with infrastructures to support redundant disaster recovery for any state of Ohio higher education institution or government agency.

According to Ellinger, each data facility will be capable of supporting two external organizations, operating in a production disaster recovery mode, in addition to sustaining the operation of its own production environment. He said the facilities will enable contracted state institutions and agencies to annually test and execute their own data disaster recovery plans and processes with greater ease and at a reduced cost to that available commercially.

To help with the project, the alliance secured partnerships with several leading information technology corporations, including IBM, Storage Technology, EMC, PSR, Computer Associates and Advizex Technologies. These corporations have agreed to use the alliance as a test bed and development center for disaster recovery technologies. Ellinger said this kind of involvement serves to benefit the alliance as a nationwide leader in the development and deployment of disaster recovery technologies and procedures.

The alliance evolved from discussions between Ohio State and UC that began over two years ago. Those discussions focused on ways that they could develop closer information technology ties and ways to jointly reduce costs associated with providing disaster recovery services. Ellinger said, "Subsequently, the alliance established among its goals the creation of disaster recovery centers at both UC and Ohio State, capable of supporting each other's information technology infrastructures in the event of a human- or natural-disaster, as well as to research and develop technologies to prevent or limit the potential loss of data and service-time should a disaster occur." Ellinger heads the project team from Ohio State, while Michael Calhoun, assistant vice president for Information Technology at UC, heads a similar team at UC.

To get this long-term, multi-phase project started, the alliance submitted grant proposals for seed funds to the Ohio Board of Regents and the Ohio Department of Development. Ellinger said the subsequent awarding of a Wright Capital Project Grant enabled UC and Ohio State to begin deploying the infrastructures necessary to exchange data.

As to progress to date, Ellinger said both UC and Ohio State have acquired, installed, tested, and refined mainframe systems that can be monitored and controlled remotely, and that permit each institution to transport both system components and application data to each other's site. Both Ohio State and UC sites have a full production version of each other's data. Additionally, both sites have acquired and install sufficient storage capabilities so that tape backups can be updated on a regular basis to further reduce down time in the event of a disaster.

"While we selected the mainframe environment for our initial deployment, we have since tested and began deployment of services for open (server-based) systems at UC and Ohio State," Ellinger said. "By the end of 2006, data will be replicated across the dark fiber network in a manner similar to what we did with the mainframe environment, and this will provide an even shorter recovery time with a minimal loss of data should a disaster occur," he stressed.

Ellinger concludes there is enthusiastic support and a willingness to participate in this project from other higher education institutions in the state. He said the following state agency and universities are preparing to sign site license agreements with the alliance in the near future - Ohio Division of Liquor Control and Akron, Bowling Green, Cleveland State, Kent State, Ohio, Miami, Shawnee State, Toledo and Wright State.