Emergency Preparedness is a pretty hot topic this year. Honestly, it should be a hot topic every year. Sure, with Covid, this year has had a special tang to it. However, we’ve seen fires in California, just as in other years, tropical storms and hurricanes, just as in other years, and all sorts of disasters around the world, just as in other years. Making preparations for a few days, or weeks, isolated in your house, or, being able to walk out of the house within 10 or 15 minutes and survive for two or three days on what you carry, these things just make sense.

Further, to make these work, it’s a great idea to practice. Bugging out, running from your house because of a natural disaster, or a not so natural one, isn’t easy to do, unless you practice. Practice can be easy & fun. We call it camping. Same idea for bugging in, staying put because of something like Covid. Practice is necessary here too. It’s easier to practice this. Don’t go shopping for a week and see how you do.

Just as emergency preparedness in the physical world requires planning and then practice to test those plans, so it should be in your IT infrastructure. You’ve implemented a failover architecture? That’s great. Have you tried failing it over to see how it works? With the applications attached? Now fail it back. You’ve got an off site location where you can restore your databases? Excellent. Do you know how to get there? Have you driven the route? Can you get there more than one way? Have you tested the restores? On, and on, the questions pile up quickly. Have you built, and have you tested, an emergency plan?

If not, best get on it.