Columbia, Boone County agree on emergency data storage

Columbia will store some “critical” data servers offsite at the Boone County 911 center to allow quick recovery from a disaster.

The Columbia City Council approved the deal to spend no more than $146,000 for five network server racks within the county-operated Joint Communications center. Boone County already planned on purchasing fourteen racks for data storage, and the city will take five of them.

City IT director Jim Chapeldaine told ABC 17 News the city had long been working on its disaster recovery plan in relation to electronic data. Columbia keeps several racks of computer servers at City Hall, which store police and fire systems, business licensing information and utility billing data.

“It’s just really important that we keep that available for whatever business unit in the city needs it,” Chapeldaine told ABC 17 News.

The city backs up this data daily with several “tapes” kept at another location. However, if a natural disaster hit City Hall, like a tornado or hail storm, and took out the data systems, it could take the city months to re-establish.

The city transferred ownership of joint communications responsibility to Boone County in 2013, with the opening of a new center in September. Chapeldaine said the building should be able to withstand the strongest tornadoes, making it an ideal location to protect network servers.

“In the event of an emergency or a disaster, we would actually have a place that we could go to to run our operations,” Chapeldaine said.

Chapeldaine said the process will take the better part of next year to complete.