In a highly successful test conducted over the weekend and continued early this morning, the eNaTIS disaster recovery centre (DRC) has proved to be fully operational.
The DRC, housed at a remote site, serves as full backup to the system’s main data centre should the latter become unavailable for whatever reason. Regular testing of disaster recovery capability is one of the Auditor-General’s standard requirements for systems of this nature. In order to comply with this requirement, the Department of Transport made preparations over the weekend and performed test switchovers between the main data centre (in Midrand) and the (remote) DRC. These tests indicated that that a full data switchover can be achieved within 60 minutes.
However, to perform a full disaster recovery test a key requirement is that an actual disaster scenario must be simulated with full user demand. Such a disaster situation was therefore simulated early this morning at the main data centre and the disaster recovery plan was initiated. Under these conditions, involving a full system user load (with approximately 1 700 users), switchover took slightly longer to complete (approximately 90 minutes).
The tests were concluded successfully, and South Africans can therefore rest assured that the eNaTIS will survive any critical event affecting its core.