Weathering the Unexpected: Failures happen, and resilience drills help organizations prepare for them.

Abstract

Whether it is a hurricane blowing down power lines, a volcanic-ash cloud grounding all flights for a continent, or a humble rodent gnawing through underground fibers -- the unexpected happens. We cannot do much to prevent it, but there is a lot we can do to be prepared for it. To this end, Google runs an annual, company-wide, multi-day Disaster Recovery Testing event -- DiRT -- the objective of which is to ensure that Google’s services and internal business operations continue to run following a disaster.