On Oct 17, 2008, at 11:15 PM, Matthew Perdue wrote:

> Quoting Paul Raulerson:
>
> "Sure- that's what we have mean, nasty, hungry lawyers for of  
> course.  And
> we own our building, which conveys different kinds of rights."
>
> and
>
> "Still, a natural disaster is way different that some city goofballs  
> kicking
> you out of your building. That kind of nonsense would NOT have been
> tolerated here. The nutcases who tried to pull something like that  
> would
> have been eagle meat - so long as the eagles have passed their bar  
> exams and
> like raw meat. ;)"
>
> Paul:
>
> I think you missed some points or details... remember I said "  
> Everyone in
> the building, including several state agencies" - one of those state
> agencies was the Office of the Attorney General of the particular  
> state. For
> the record, it wasn't "city goofballs" kicking people out of the  
> building -
> it was the fire marshal and the health department (city and state  
> health
> departments, actually). The fire marshal and health departments have  
> the
> legal authority to condemn buildings as unfit for human occupation,  
> and that
> holds in every state in the United States, including Texas, the  
> Independent
> Enclave of Austin and the District of Columbia.
>

You said that no-one was allowed to go into the building because there  
was no water in the building.

That would not have stood in court here in Austin for even 15 minutes,  
and in fact there was a case here where just such a silly ruling did  
NOT stand.  So yes, in my opinion, it was "city goofballs" who pulled  
that stunt, and I'm not particularly impressed by whatever titles  
those goofballs may have held. As I said, that is my opinion, YMMV.  
I'm even willing to be convinced otherwise.

At the worst, an alternative solution of porta-potties and a source of  
potable water could have been a proposed as a workable compromise.

These kinds of horror stories do not usually serve to help companies  
manage risk better, they serve to inspire FUD. While true, they are  
not normal situations, nor at least in this case, are they always  
situations that were inevitable.

You want a horror story?  In my day job, all of our X86 capacity is  
handled by IBM BladeServers. We use an expensive product called  
Christie Bare Metal Restore to ensure we can slap a working Windows  
image of any particular server back onto DASD storage in minutes. All  
of this is a design that I involved IBM in when I did it. The thinking  
was that we could contract with IBM for DR services for a limited  
period of time until we build out more and additional data centers.

IBM Equipment, IBM DR. Should be a perfect match, eh?  The IBM DR  
center came back and told me the Christie BMR would not work,  
because.... the class of servers we needed to use in their data center  
consisted of HP 1u/2u servers. Racked up nicely of course.  (*sigh*)

They have since corrected that situation, but that is the kind of  
nonsense we run into from vendors, even the very BIG vendors.
The "common wisdom" is either to spend much precious time reloading  
Windows on different machines, or else build out a DR center with  
duplicates of the equipment you use in your other data centers. Not  
very smart choices in either case.

What I would like to see is discussion on smart alternatives to  
spending millions of dollars on DR sites that are not really used  
unless there is a disaster event.

One of the smartest ideas I have ever seen in this whole area is what  
HP is doing with their data centers; the "six pack" data center  
structure they are building. That is smart, cost effective, and very  
very capable of handling enormous surges in capacity.

We need something like that in the SMB sector.

And yes, this is a bit of a hot button with me. Mostly because it is a  
simple issue that has been made complex, and the common wisdom on this  
subject is just that - common. I want to find all the uncommon  
wisdome; the stuff where people have come up with *better* ideas. :)



> Owning the building does not confer any special rights to continue  
> to occupy
> the building when the fire marshall and health department have  
> restricted or
> prohibited access - the building owner's office was in this building  
> too -
> they were thrown out with all the tenants.
>

Ownership always conveys special rights. Sometimes you simply have to  
fight harder for them.


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