Upcoming Disaster Recovery Exercise on May 8, 2021

Saturday, May 8, 2021 

Time: 7:30 am to 7:00 pm 

Locations: All campuses 

Purpose: Disaster Recovery Exercise that will help prepare and protect Laurier’s IT infrastructure in the event of a disaster 

Services Impacted: At intervals during this exercise there will be intermittent outages resulting in unstable access to the following services: 

• Active Directory for authentication 
• Shibboleth Single Sign-On  
• MyLearningSpace 
• All Laurier’s websites including wlu.ca and students.wlu.ca 
• Emergency Notification System (ENS) 
• Banner 
• Navigator 
• LORIS 
• OneCard   

The wired network, Wi-Fi access and Internet connectivity, as well as door access, classroom computers, and AV equipment are not expected to be impacted and connecting to email off-campus will not be impacted.   

The ICT staff will be completing the Services Up testing to ensure all services are working as expected after the completion of the exercise.  Please let me know if you have any specific questions or concerns, so we can work together to address them and ensure your activities can proceed without impacts. 

FAQ: 

What is the Disaster Recovery Exercise? 

The Disaster Recovery (DR) Exercise is a test of the strategies and methods that we have developed for recovering Laurier’s information technology (IT) systems and applications required to support priority business functions, and processes and services in case there was ever an emergency that brought them down.   

During the exercise systems and services are shut down and are restored in an alternative data center to test our ability to migrate services and systems should a disaster occur. We then test the services to ensure they are fully operational before the changes are reverted. 

Why do we need to do it every year?  

The annual testing of the Disaster Recovery Plan is to ensure that the plan is up-to-date and reflects business and system changes that happen throughout the year. 

How long will services be impacted? 

A 12-hour maintenance window is scheduled for the exercise.  Services will be affected during this time.  

How likely is real disaster that impacts IT services to take place? 

There is always the possibility that something could occur, and we conduct these exercises as a risk mitigation strategy.  

Why do the services need to be turned off? 

During a disaster exercise, primary services are shut down as a simulation of a “disaster”, this is the only way to test that the plan works, and services can be restored from the secondary location.