So true. I know that since I'm at a facility on the eastern shore, we're also prone to hurricanes. We actually shift over to our backup facility on all systems for a week twice a year - prior to the start of hurricane season, and after. Actually running off of your backup systems lets you see how they will respond, etc. And you get to test / refine your procedures.

Another thing to note is that an orderly transition to your backup facility during a test is far different than during an emergency. Following our normal rollover procedures takes hours. However, earlier this year we had a hardware failure that took our primary server down. We were up and running at our backup facility (for just that server) in about 15 minutes.