Colleagues from UNNC, UNMC and the UK responded to a situation where Campus Solutions and its associated systems were unavailable for a prolonged period of time.

The simulated scenario affected all campuses at a very busy time just after registration, impacting UNNC and UNMC at 1300 on Tuesday 28^th March, several hours before the UK would have arrived for work.

Silver Response Teams (teams trained to respond to such disruption to student journey operations) on each campus reacted quickly and made arrangements to issue communications to staff and students, providing alternative ways of working.  Feedback is currently being gathered and lessons learned to ensure we are ready for GoLive on all campuses.

To prove we have the technical capability to recover from a major disruption, colleagues from Project Transform, IS and Ciber worked late into the night on Tuesday 28^th March, to switch systems from the main data centre in Slough, over to the disaster recovery site in Frankfurt.

All of the major systems ran ‘live’ from Frankfurt until the evening of Thursday 30^th March, when they were then returned to Slough.

During the process, a number of valuable lessons were learnt, which will improve overall technical resilience.

Completing such a test is a first for the University and a major undertaking and achievement.

Taidhgh Oregan, Business Continuity Lead, said “The University can take great confidence from this exercise, it has really demonstrated genuine resilient capability this week.”

Plans on paper are one thing, but bringing them to life really makes a difference. I’m extremely happy with how quickly and effectively each Silver Response team performed across each campus.”