Business Continuity – having a backup workstation

I mentioned this topic briefly when I presented on HA/DR for Pragmatic Works in March during my DBA Madness Series. I got the idea from Randolph West and he said it was fine to mention it during the webinar. Since then, I’ve got a video “in the can” on the topic and will be posting it on my Videos page once it goes through final edit.

I’ve been reorganizing my office due to lighting issues and guess what, my PC stopped working. Luckily I had taken my own advice to heart and had my VM in the cloud mostly ready to go (I missed a few tools, but they’re there now!). I live in an area with many bridges. Just imagine if you were stuck on the wrong side of the bridge (it happens all the time around here), and maybe your laptop was not with you or out of power. Having your phone with you will give you a way to connect to your VM, start it up, and go from there.

Randolph did a great job listing out many details, but it really gets down to the following topics:

  1. Tools you need to do your job.
  2. Applications you might need to support for your customers.
  3. Passwords needed to connect to your systems.
  4. Phone list and contact information for your teammates and vendors.
  5. URLs/Sites for all those tricky SAAS applications you might need to use.
  6. Chocolatey to keep it all up to date.

Sometimes you just need to login and fix it or at least get a really good view of what’s going on, and having this workstation available at all times might just save you some grief. Just remember to shut it down when it’s not in use and you’re golden!