Update Tuesday 25 April 2006 1:25pm: Last night Cyclone Monica changed track and has hit the coastline early, as such is situated further away from Darwin than originally predicted, it has also lost strength, Cyclone Monica is now rated at category 1.

For those that don’t know Darwin Australia is currently on cyclone warning, because of tropical cyclone Monica. (see current location here)

Working in the IT Industry at a site that hosts around 160 servers, means DR planning is especially critical, so on Friday when it looked very likely Tropical Cyclone Monica would affect Darwin our DR plan was activated, some items of our DR plan that have been put into place over the past few days have included:

• Team members that would be responsible for in-acting various aspect of the plan
• Flag critical systems (comms, email, voice, main corporate website, university radio station) that should run as long as possible.
• Flag non-critical system which could be powered down to conserve UPS & Generator power
• List of items to purchase that may be required help to limit the impact of the elements (Masking tape/Plastic sheets/Canvas/buckets)
• Confirm list of contact details for team members and external contacts (Government/Suppliers/Warrant agents/Contractors)
• Ensuring recent backups have happened successfully
• Double check no systems are being left out of the backups  
• Confirm stand-by systems/network equipment is available and ready to be used, if any production systems/network equipment is damaged
• Review restore methods, confirm this documentation is up to date and no systems have been left out
• Ensure CD/DVD media for all systems is available
• Check that all system documentation is up to date and printed out
• Arrange for additional backups to be taken and stored along with printed system documentation at secure sites

Above is just a small list of what our team have been working on since Friday, now that Monica is less than 24 hours away we are all hoping it loses strength and keeps a safe distance from Darwin so that our DR plan does not need to be in acted any further.