CPI Qualified Plan Consultants, Inc.

We developed our Business Continuity Plan with the goal of continuing the timely service to which our clients are accustomed. Here are some of the highlights and significant features of our business continuity plan, as well as some general technology information:

We developed a Disaster Recovery Team to aid in facilitation of every employee at CPI in the event of a disaster. Team members are drawn from every department and meet on a regular basis to enhance and update procedures. Employees participate in periodic drills to ensure that every employee is accounted for and moved quickly and safely to the shelter.

We have sophisticated battery backup and power generation equipment to ensure that our systems have a constant power source. Generator power is supplied to the Network Operations Center as well as several critical departments within the main facility.

The Network Operations Center is housed in a specially constructed building that can withstand direct winds of 350 mph. The building also serves as a storm shelter for our employees and guests, and can protect over 600 people. Portions of this building would also serve as an auxiliary work area in the event our main building is damaged due to a storm. Below are a few snapshots of this structure from beginning to end.



Systems have been implemented that automatically notify the Information Technology staff of potential system problems by a variety of methods including text messaging, cell phone, and email. This monitoring also measures system health, confirms successful completion of backup processes, and monitors system capacity. We rely on Internet connectivity for communications, as well as to provide web site access to our clients. For these reasons we have made reliability and redundancy a priority. CPI's Internet connection is provided by a trio of T-1 lines, communicating with our Internet service provider via a SONET ring, which provides multiple data paths to guard against outages. CPI uses Hewlett Packard servers for all critical server systems, and uses Microsoft Windows and Microsoft SQL Server for the server operating system and database server functions. Data housed on these servers is stored on redundant disk arrays to avoid data loss from drive failures. We employ failover and load balancing technology in our web servers, ensuring that processing power will always be in excess of demand, and protecting against individual server failure. We utilize similar failover technology for the database servers that support our recordkeeping systems. The integrity of client and participant data is crucial, and to insure that data, we have made an investment in a Storage Area Network (SAN) from EMC Corp. The SAN allows for periodic "snapshots" of participant data and other critical information to be taken at intervals more frequent than with conventional tape backup technology. It also provides a higher level of fault tolerance and reliability than RAID-based storage alone, due to redundancy in every component of the system. Our disaster relocation site is in a former grade school building in the community of Albert, KS, approximately 15 miles from our Great Bend office. It provides facilities for over 300 people to continue servicing our clients. We maintain and monitor a secure private network connection from the Albert facility to our network operations center. Over 300 workstations are in place and ready to be used within hours of an event that deems all or part of our Great Bend facility unusable. Investments in both power and network infrastructure have been made to ensure that CPI can operate at this facility for an extended period of time.