The Shires of Murray and Waroona in Western Australia have installed a disaster recovery link so that each shire can use the other’s infrastructure in times of need.
The link enables the shires to continue operating on a skeleton staff, with little or no downtime, during disasters such as floods or building destruction.
Shire of Murray Chief Executive Officer Dean Unsworth said the shires had been resource sharing for some time, and the disaster recovery link was a win-win for both Councils.
"The link means our IT department can flick a switch and have the replicated servers at either site take over the duties of the core servers. Essential staff can work from either shire with very little downtime and almost no loss of data."
The link will use Motorola 7GHz microwave technology on a licensed frequency, transmitting at 50mb/sec. It will be located on the Shire of Murray’s 25 metre high communications tower and at the Shire of Waroona Depot.
The server replications will be undertaken through VEEAM, offering advanced virtualization-powered data protection in VEEAM backup and replication.
Empired Ltd Global Communication Services and Pinjarra Crane Hire are partners in the project.
Prior to the IT sharing arrangement, the Shire of Murray was already supporting the Shire of Waroona in the areas of governance and risk management, with plans for further resource sharing across human resources and communications in the future.
