In October, 2003, Corona Corporation, a multi-billion dollar services organr-tion, initiated a project to strean'line their backup procedures in their primary data center located in Los Angeles, California. The focus of this project was a missioncritical database that existed on a server array. This database wasjust over 2 terabytes in size and was used enterprise-wide by employees and wstmners. It was estimated that downtime for the systems that used this database would be measured at an impact of 53,000 per hour to Corona Corporation. The current time for a weekly baseline backup ofthis database was measured at 20 hours, and the backup procedures were placing a heavy performance strain on the systems that accessed the database while the backup was taking place. Corona Corporation retained Electra Consulting, a leader in the disaster recovery business located in the northeastem United States, to help them improve the backup performance. The service order that Corona issued stated that the primary indicator of success for the replacement solution would be the reduction in the time that it took to backup the database. The goals were to out the backup time in half and to schedule the weekly baseline backup for off-peak evening and night hours so that the performance of production systems would not be substantially impacted. During the analysis, consultants from Electra identied a key technological component that was primarily responsible for the bottleneck. 0n the team's recommendation. the project manager selected a replacement technology that allowed more data to bowl in parallel and at higher speeds, providing for a faster backup without compromising accuracy or data integrity. New hardware and software components were procured and installed to further streamline the backup process The solution was deployed into production in January, 2004, and measurements indicated that the backup time was reduced to less than 4 hours, winning the project and Electra Consulting much acclaim. Another benet of the solution was that the data could be restored selectively or in its entirety. The project was completed and closed out in March, 200-1. On July 12th, 2004, at 12:35 a.m., Corona Corporation suffered a catastrophic hardware failure of their disk controller, resulting in data corruption and loss across the entire drive array. The business continuance team was deployed and detem'rined that replacement hardware was required and a full system restore would be necessary. By 4:00 a.m., the team was implementing the disaster recovery plan that Electra Consulting had created. Arr identical drive array was installed, and the data restore was begun, with an initial projected restoration tirrre of8:30 a.m. on the same day. As the restore was initiated, however, it was discovered that the full backup that Electra Consulting had implemented was in fact only backing up the 2 terabyte database. The previous legacy backup, which had taken 20 hours, was backing up not only the data but the entire volume, allowing for a complete system restore. The Electra Consulting solution, however, only backed up the data. Using Electra's solution, the volurrres were prepared and formatted and then reloaded with the operating system. The system was then congured and patched, the proper accounts and security were created, the database application was reloaded and congured, and the 24erabyte database was restored. The systems which relied upon the database were down in excess of 60 hours, costing Corona over $500,000 in lost opportunity and customer impact. After this incident, Electra Consulting's project manager was called back to Corona Corporation for a meeting. In the meeting, Corona's business continuance manager stated that she believed Corona had been mied by Electra. The project manager from Bectra adamantly stood by the fact that the service order, written by Corona, asked for precisely what had been delivered and that he had substantially beaten the key performance indicators. Corona Corporation asserted that because Eleotra's solution was a replacement solution, Electra should have made a greater effort to understand what was in existence before attempting to put another solution in place. Case Study | Questions Corona Corporation: 1. Who was ultimately responsible for the situation that occurred at Corona Corporation? 2. Was it reasonable for Electra's project manager to identify and implement a backup solution without condering the scenario that occurred? 3. What actions should have been taken to prevent this from happening? By whom? 4. What effects do situations such as this one have on the way customer organizations approach projects? 5. What should be some ofthe primary lessons learned by Electra Consulting