Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Service

1. Backup is taken at the LHRIC every single night.** (Please see Finance Manager Backup Procedures description below)
2. If the LHRIC is open and the district is closed, we will restore the database to ensure the payroll department can access it.
3. The LHRIC has two generators and multiple labs for the district personnel to come and process payroll.
4. We will see if the district has one set of both Payroll and Accounting checks at the LHRIC. Some districts do NOT give the LHRIC a set of checks. If this is the case, please make sure someone from payroll department has a set of payroll and accounting checks to bring to the LHRIC.
5. The Payroll department should have a signature disk in a location other than the district office to ensure that the checks can be signed. They should have a copy of the payroll and accounting signature. If they do not, all checks must be hand-signed.
6. District should have contact information for their bank handy, so they may call the bank to let them know that the direct deposit file will be coming from a different IP address than normal.
7. District should also have a token ring and directions from the bank to bring to the LHRIC to process Direct Deposit.

Finance Manager Backup Procedures

On the Finance Manager Server at the School District:

The entire Finance Manager server is backed up to tape at the district on a nightly basis. This backup is for the School District's archive storage and recovery of the Finance Manager server. It is the responsibility of the School District to ensure that the tape backup completes successfully and that there is actual data contained on the tape.

A batch procedure is run at a specified time every night to copy the Finance Manager database to an Export directory on the Finance Manager server in the district. This copy of the data serves two purposes: one, an immediate backup of the data from the night before, in the case where a quick recovery of the Finance Manager data is needed; two, it serves as a means for the LHRIC operations department to archive a copy of the School District's data at our site.

LHRIC Finance Manager Server:

The LHRIC operations department connects to the School District's Finance Manager server in the morning and pulls the copy of the School District's data that was made the night before and stored in the Export directory. They never have access to the Live Finance Manager database. The operations department checks the date of the copy, and if it is not from the night before, they will notify the appropriate technical staff for the School District that the copy of the Finance Manager database did not complete the night before.

The archived copy is stored on our server here at the RIC for the day. This is then offloaded to a DVD and stored in a locked room with multiple layers of security. The purpose of this is to be able to archive the School District's data for research purposes and provide off-site storage for the School District. Each day, a copy of all the databases is backed up to the NERIC BOCES (Albany) and Mid-Hudson BOCES (Ulster). Two days' worth of backups are stored there.

The copy of the data that is pulled back to our site serves two purposes: one, as stated before, this is an archive of the School Districts data, which provides the School District with a Disaster Recovery ability to use the RIC server as a hot site, in case of an emergency; two, it allows the RIC training and customer support staff to have access to your most current data, thus enabling them to provide the most accurate training and support for questions being called in to them, by allowing the support staff to test the situations out using your data, but not affect your LIVE data. The backups are restored to the training database approximately every week to ensure the reliability of the copy.

** It should be noted that our service agreement states that we will back up bi-weekly to our site. We expanded this as a just-in-case nightly procedure.

Disaster Recovery Service Business Continuity for Finance Manager

• We back up all the databases daily, locally, and to our building next door. If your district is part of our WAN, you are protected by a Cisco firewall.
• Operations lets us know if there is a problem with any backup daily
• We restore every week to make sure the backups are fine.
• We move all databases up to Albany, Mid Hudson & Rockland BOCES daily (two days are retained up there)
• We move all databases to Iron Mountain — a mine in New Jersey
• We have pre-configured servers with databases at the LHRIC to run Disaster Recovery, so it’s just a matter of moving six files in and bringing the database up
• We test the process with a District official once a year. We can have you up and running in less than 1 hour.
• We will store one payroll cycle and one accounting cycle of checks in a 3-deep lockdown room — in case of an emergency
• Environmental controls exist to ensure the security and reliability of equipment. Such controls include: fire/smoke detection, temperature/humidity controls, and a backup generator.

Hosting Finance Manager at the LHRIC

• LHRIC takes care of all Microsoft operating system updates
• You will have access to a Training database
• We back up the server nightly
• The Backup remotely goes to Rockland, Ulster, and Albany BOCES.
• The server environment is replicated to Rockland BOCES nightly.
• Database backups are kept at the LHRIC and Rockland BOCES for 90 days.
• You will have two full data centers that can host the application with a high-speed connection between them.
• If the District is without power (i.e., Hurricane Sandy) all LHRIC data centers (Rockland BOCES, 450 Mamaroneck Ave) have a power generator.
• The server environment is monitored for space and CPU at all times.
• The server environment is kept up to date with software and hardware at no additional cost.