SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Latest on a computer outage affecting the California Department of Motor Vehicles (all times local):
6 p.m.
Two technology experts say the California Department of Motor Vehicles does not appear to have had an adequate disaster recovery system in place before a computer meltdown wiped out most operations at its offices for several days.
The experts reviewed limited information that the DMV provided in response to questions from The Associated Press. They said Thursday that it appears the DMV’s technology infrastructure falls short of the best industry practices.
Forrester Research Vice-President Richard Fichera says the DMV’s reliance on primary and backup systems housed in the same hardware cabinet for disaster recovery is “grotesque.”
DMV spokesman Jaime Garza says the system has redundancy but it wasn’t designed to survive a failure of both primary and backup systems.
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9:57 a.m.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles says most of its 188 offices are offering full services following a catastrophic computer failure that crippled most of the department’s operations.
The DMV said Thursday that 12 offices are still unable to process driver’s license or vehicle registration matters. Another five can deal with driver’s licenses but not registrations.
Computer struggles forced DMV customers around the state to wait out what officials have called a “perfect storm” of simultaneous hard-drive failures that crippled two thirds of field offices.
Officials say experts are working to repair the system and get office functions back online but they have not provided an estimate for completing the work. Online services remain functional.
