Asheville is a steadily growing, prosperous city in Western North Carolina with a metropolitan area population of about 250,000 and an annual  operating budget of more than $150 million. The city operates a Web site with information about the city and links to a variety of online services. Asheville also has a mobile app for citizen services requests that is very popular.

When Jonathan Feldman became the city’s chief information officer, he conducted a review of its information infrastructure to establish priorities for his staff. One of the items on his list of concerns was the city’s disaster recovery infrastructure. Having had some involvement in the Hurricane Katrina recovery, Feldman was worried about what he found. Asheville did have a disaster recovery facility, but it was located just two blocks away from the city’s main data center. Further, the switchover from the main data center to the backup servers in an emergency would take more than a day to accomplish. As he considered the increased needs of citizens to gain information about city services should an emergency occur, Feldman was concerned that the city’s Web servers would be offline for such an extended period, especially those servers that supported the mobile app.

Operating a disaster recovery facility can be expensive. In addition to replicating the regular data center’s servers, storage devices, and software, the facility needs to have reliable dual backup power supplies. In addition, the physical facility itself must be reinforced to withstand forces of nature threats such as hurricanes, high winds, and floods. And to be truly effective, the recovery facility should be located far enough from the main data center so that a threat that affects one will not threaten the other. Feldman knew from experience that convincing a city council to spend substantial funds on computer equipment that might never be used can be a challenge.

REQUIRED

1. Using your favorite search engine and the resources of your library, develop a set of recommendations regarding the possible use of cloud computing services to operate the City of Asheville mobile app server. In about 200 words, outline pros and cons of this solution to Feldman’s concerns.

2. Many companies use a hybrid cloud approach for their entire information technology infrastructure by storing highly sensitive data and programs in their own data center and moving routine operations to the cloud. Using your favorite search engine and the resources of your library to review hybrid cloud options and write about 200 words in which you recommend a hybrid cloud strategy for the City of Asheville’s information technology infrastructure, including its Web servers, mobile app server, and disaster recovery servers.