Below is an update on our progress developing High Availability (HA) capabilities for ITS systems and services.

HA represents continuous service delivery under normal circumstances and rapid restoration in the event of disruption. The three components of an HA architecture, outlined in the ITS strategic plan, are (1) implementation and operation; (2) location diversity; and (3) disaster recovery. The first component provides a foundation that all services rely upon and that ITS is evolving by streamlining existing service relationships, correcting process and operating gaps, and aligning service delivery to community perspectives. For the next component, location diversity, ITS has built out a secondary data center on the Storrs campus where we house alternate infrastructure for a number of applications that have broad demographic impact, such as HuskyCT. Finally, as part of our plan for disaster recovery, ITS has established an external contract to provide infrastructure and operating resources for key university applications. We recently conducted a successful test of all disaster recovery supported applications at the IBM facility in Sterling Forest, NY, that validated our ability to restore and operate key university operations for this location in the event of a campus emergency.

We understand that service disruptions, both minor and major, negatively impact the university, and all of the elements of our HA strategy are designed to provide the best practical results with the limited resources available to us. They help us ensure that we can effectively deliver robust services to our community.

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