Disaster Recovery & Backups

[RR1]

Please could you tell me how your computer LIMS systems are managed:

1. If the system server went down, is the information 'mirrored' to another server, so that you can continue using this without any noticeable difference.

2. How often are routine backups of your system made.

3. If your servers all went down, how much information would you lose?

Many thanks!

[Steven Jeff]

Hi Rashmi

My computer system is relatively simple and PC based

1, With a computer system failure, if simple we can assign another PC for the blood transfusion (with the help of our programmer on line). With a complete failure. we resort back to a pre-prepared paper system until we can resolve the problem. Note at this stage we will restrict the transfusion activity in the laboratory.

2. The computer backs up data daily to the hospital server. The Hospital server backs up to an external server on a daily basis.

3. We would not lose any historical data if the hospital based computer systems failed. I am sure the external servers are also backed up but I have not asked that question.

And finally and not in your questions I can demonstrate accurate recovery of backed-up data to a separate drive to prove it works.

Regards

Steve

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

Please could you tell me how your computer LIMS systems are managed:

1. If the system server went down, is the information 'mirrored' to another server, so that you can continue using this without any noticeable difference.

2. How often are routine backups of your system made.

3. If your servers all went down, how much information would you lose?

Many thanks!

1. At least one, if not more (it's national).

2. Once a day (in the early hours, between about 01.00hrs and 02.00hrs - which is a real pain in the b*m if you are trying to issue a cross-match, because at thet time of the morning, it's got to be urgent, otherwise we wouldn't be doing it, usually involves a bleeding liver transplant with 5 antibodies minimum, and, because we then have to issue by hand-written compatibility labels, usually involves a Sri Lankan name - but hey, it's got to be done some time, and that is the time when the computer is least used)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

3. I'm not sure, but I think none (I think, which is always dangerous, that the server writes to a tape/CD-ROM, or whatever the IT bods use, all the time).

:):)

[RR1]

Hi Rashmi

My computer system is relatively simple and PC based

1, With a computer system failure, if simple we can assign another PC for the blood transfusion (with the help of our programmer on line). With a complete failure. we resort back to a pre-prepared paper system until we can resolve the problem. Note at this stage we will restrict the transfusion activity in the laboratory.

2. The computer backs up data daily to the hospital server. The Hospital server backs up to an external server on a daily basis.

3. We would not lose any historical data if the hospital based computer systems failed. I am sure the external servers are also backed up but I have not asked that question.

Hi Steve, so if your LIMS writes to the hospital sever instead of a 'stand-alone' Pathology server, is this 'mirrored? You also said that you would not lose any historical data, but how about all the current stuff you processed up to the last back-up? i am just trying to get an understanding of how computer systems should be set-up, I don't understand a lot of the IT speak.

Thanks!

[RR1]

Oh...another related question, please could someone explain what the term 'background rules' for a transfusion system would involve, specifically if someone said to you that the background rules of the system were beginning to fail.

[Steven Jeff]

Hi Steve, so if your LIMS writes to the hospital sever instead of a 'stand-alone' Pathology server, is this 'mirrored? You also said that you would not lose any historical data, but how about all the current stuff you processed up to the last back-up? i am just trying to get an understanding of how computer systems should be set-up, I don't understand a lot of the IT speak.

Thanks!

Hi Rashmi

Sorry, I didn't quite explain this fully. All the laboratory PC's are all networked to a small laboratory server as are all the users outside the laioratory who can access validated results. Blood transfusion only exists on one of the laboratory PC's. If that fails then I can with help re-assign blood transfusion to another PC. The PC based pathology program can process a certain amount of data i.e. blood group and result input etc. but this is immediately transferred to the laboratory server on saving the record. All patient files are stored on the server only. The data on the laboratory server is backed up to the hospital server on a daily basis.

Now I have got my head into gear, I would lose the data that had been processed since that last backup. Not too much of a problem in a small laboratory, but in yours a much bigger issue.

Regards

Steve

:)

[adiescast]

Please could you tell me how your computer LIMS systems are managed:

1. If the system server went down, is the information 'mirrored' to another server, so that you can continue using this without any noticeable difference.

2. How often are routine backups of your system made.

3. If your servers all went down, how much information would you lose?

Many thanks!

1. We have a redundant server system in which both servers receive and store the same information real time. We would have a noticeable difference in switching to the second server for blood bank and instruments. There is some complication about not being able to run these in duplicate. The rest of the manual lab work can be run and reported on either computer seamlessly. data from instruments and blood bank flow seamlessly to the second server and can be retrieved as needed. If the first server went down, we would have about an hour downtime to move blood bank and instrument functions to the second server and another hour to move it back after recovery.

2. Backups are performed on each shift.

3. No data should be completely lost. We would go to our downtime paper backup system while the server is down and enter the data post recovery.

I don't know what it means if someone says the background rules are failing. Ususally background rules have to do with the computer's decision making tree and those should not fail unless the code is compromised. It's not something that could degrade over time (unless there is compromise to the code over time that does not immediately invalidate the running of the code).

[RR1]

Thanks adiescast for your reply it seems you have a very well planned system in place- I could happily live without a computer for 1hr while this is moved to another server, but thoughts of being possibly days and days without a system gives me sleepless nights!!

Also thanks to Steve for clarifying the points.

[kate murphy]

We have a nationally marketed LIS that resides on 2 servers that run concurrently. If one goes down, we migrate to the other server, though there is the issue of instrument interfaces as noted by adiescast. If all servers crashed, our vendor would be able to help us recover data, and no data should be lost. We also use a manual paper downtime system.

Our hospital IT is moving to a 'clustered server' - not sure exactly what that means, but IT assures me it's safer.

We do backups every night (yeah, Malcolm, I agree, at #@*2am!)

In addition, we do an ABO Extract weekly that's posted on each PC desktop, so that we can check ABO & history if the LIS goes down.

If we completely loose all power (no LIS, no PC, no nuthin') - we treat every patient as a 'new' patient. Double ABO's, though we cannot restrict to transfusing only O's.