Peer to Peer Magazine

62 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | WINTER 2017 Friends are important. We saw so many examples of true friendship within all levels of the organization, where non-Sidley folks provided help and offered resources. Hogan and Hartson, a neighbor of Sidley's in midtown, provided critical midtown office space for employees displaced by the disaster. On Monday, September 17, New York City employees had access to a desk and a phone as well as all of their documents and email messages. iManage offered engineering and support resources for the DMS team, and an iManage consultant joined the Sidley team to support iManage restoration and conversion efforts. The team from PLA was instrumental in the success of the effort. One consultant, grounded from vacation plans, joined the DMS team and was critical to the PC DOCS restoration and conversion efforts. Practice makes perfect. It's especially important when the effort is mission critical. Being hit with a disaster recovery effort is never convenient, but Sidley was blessed with good timing. The email management and document management teams were in the midst of document and email conversion testing, requiring test systems for both outgoing applications and target production systems. Having the infrastructure in place was a critical piece of luck that saved a lot of time, resources and effort. Keep it simple, stupid. Think 2001, and the days of thick binders filled with detailed process diatribes on endless reams of paper. Sidley, like most organizations at that time, did not have a one-pager and had to rely on detailed documentation that described complex processes. Best practices following 9/11 emerged that simplified recovery process following the WYNTKN methodology: What You Need To Know Now. Alignment motivates and increases outcomes. During our daily a.m. status meetings, we were reminded of the reasons why we were working around the clock. The reasons articulated were obvious at the macro level, but micro stories emerged where we considered the fate of the firm and its impact on all levels of employees. Sadly, Sidley still mourns a beloved New York receptionist in the wake of the disaster. Thankfully, other disasters were averted, and systems were restored and the firm was fully functional on Monday, September 17, 2001. From the mail clerks to the senior partners, personnel received paychecks that week, health insurance was intact and the firm was able to reenable critical functions to support its employees. P2P LESSONS LEARNED Rising Strong: A 9/11 Disaster Recovery Case Study LESSONS LEARNED 9.14 – 9.17.2001 Sidley IS team assembled at 22 E. Monroe Street, home of Sidley's administrative services in Chicago. Thursday: The backup tapes arrived from New Jersey warehouse. Those stranded in New York City returned to Chicago and elsewhere. Restoration of the data was initiated; team realized that backup from Monday, September 10, 2001, was not included in the recovered tapes. All other documents and data from both Sidley servers and Brown & Wood servers were restored to their respective testing environments in Chicago. Email team set up in the testing lab at 22 E. Monroe. DMS, network and DBA team set up in the data center at First National Plaza — 10 S. Dearborn, 25th floor. Teams rebuilt Sidley Austin Brown & Wood databases from backup tapes on Chicago-based servers. Emergency document and email data conversions were executed from Notes/PC DOCS to Exchange/iManage. Network was reconfigured to bypass New York City and route all traffic to Chicago data center. Chicago test environments were promoted to production servers. 9.18.2001 Sidley New York City opened for business in borrowed space in midtown Manhattan; attorneys and staff had access to all email as of September 10, 2001, and all documents that were checked into the DMS as of Sunday evening. Performance across the WAN proved reasonable, Sidley began supporting New York City-based users from Chicago infrastructure, a configuration that was supported for over a year following the disaster. 55 West Monroe Street, Chicago, IL Home of Sidley administrative personnel in 2001

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