CONTINGENCY PLANS AND DISASTER RECOVERIES

The most important part of disaster recovery is having a contingency plan and current backup files. The AIS facility's contingency plan covers what is required to get the facility back online as soon as possible. Your contingency plan should include emergency response, backup operations, and recovery plans. To have current backups, we must ensure that normal saves are done as scheduled. The saves can be categorized as either whole system or data file saves. The AIS facility's resources, schedule, and instructions will be the governing factors as to which category of saves and the frequency with which the saves will be done. For further guidance, as to the minimum frequency and the category of saves, refer to the local type commander's (TYCOM) instructions.

Another part of the recovery process is making sure that replacement parts are available. There are constraints as to the number of parts maintained onboard your activity. Before a major deployment (or periodically for shore activities), it is important to take an inventory of the parts so if the parts are not on board, they can be ordered.

EMERGENCY RESPONSES

The last major area we are going to look at is emergency response. When a problem occurs, such as a job aborts or the system goes down, the steps you and your AIS staff must follow are:

^1. Log the problem. A good rule is to log everything; this can save time and help to identify problems early.

2. Notify management, users, and the maintenance technician. By notifying management, you provide them the information they need to answer questions and make decisions concerning the system. If the users are kept informed, they won't be as apt to keep calling the operators when the operators are busy trying to get the system back up and running. In notifying the maintenance technicians, whether hardware or software, you need to tell them what you were doing, exactly what happened, and what you have tried to do to fix the problem.

3. Adjust staffing when possible. Adjusting staffing works in two ways. If the system is going to be down for an extended period of time, it is a waste to keep all the operators there with nothing to do. Likewise, there are times when additional expertise will have to be brought in to help get the system up and running. Either way, this will be your decision as the AIS facility manager. You will have to analyze the situation and decide what skills are needed to solve a problem, who has the skills, who is available, how many personnel are needed, and so on.

EMERGENCY URGENT CHANGE REQUESTS

Occasionally, the best-laid plans will have to be changed. One of these times is when an emergency urgent change request (priority job) comes in. Normally, there is a good reason for each emergency urgent change request. These change requests cover both application and system programs.

For application programs, some reasons for urgent change requests are a special report needed for a meeting, last-minute corrections before starting a monthly or yearly job, and a deadline that is moved to

an earlier time. Invariably, a priority job comes in that must be run just when the shift is almost over. Being a customer-oriented service, it is our job to get the product out.

With system programs, three common reasons for urgent change requests are special saves, changes to the operating system, and system testing by NAVMASSO.

SUMMARY

Scheduling is the interface between the user, I/O control, and computer operations. The scheduler's job is to follow the AIS facility's scheduling procedures to develop daily, weekly, and/or monthly production schedules.

You will be depended on to effectively and efficiently schedule the computer and other related resources of your AIS facility to meet user processing requirements.

Input/output control is an important AIS function. It is the point of contact for AIS users (customers). Like

in any other business, customers must be treated with courtesy, tact, and diplomacy. It is the I/O clerk's job to receive jobs from users; maintain logs, prepare jobs to be run on the computer; make sure everything is ready on time; communicate with users on job requirements and problems; and check, prepare, and distribute output products.

Each of the I/O control clerk's tasks may involve customer liaison. Maintaining good customer relations is as important as processing the customer's jobs.

We talked about different types of reports, performance-tuning initiatives, application software libraries, trouble reports and technical assists, operational guidelines, and emergency change requests. This is, by no means, a complete list. As you continue in your career, you will be adding new skills and more responsibilities to these. This chapter gives you the foundation needed to build on, with the skills you have and those you will learn.