COMDISCO is in rather serious economic trouble. Among other details is the fact that their business model was heavily dependent upon leasing. The way that leasing works is that they buy the computer on short term financing, and then rent it out at reasonable rates that will pay off the loan before the hardware is worthless. This works well if you are able to arrange for financing at preferential rates, which they used to be able to do.

However many of the holders of the leases were dot-coms who have since gone under, defaulting on the leases. When that happens it is COMDISCO who picks up the slack, which leaves them with a huge liability if they can't find someone else to lease. But it gets worse. Because they are in a sector which was just so hard hit, they have seen their stock plummet and no longer can even qualify for the preferential loans that they need to make leasing work. They do, however, have real assets. But those assets are unfortunately in an overbuilt sector.

At least this was the situation as of a couple of months ago. It might have improved since. But the lesson is clear, before finalizing any disaster recovery plans, be sure to do due financial diligence on your chosen co-lo provider. It doesn't matter how carefully you have set up your hardware. If the power goes out for nonpayment of bills, your site is down.

But on a more positive note for disaster recovery you might want to look at [link|http://www.angelfire.com/hi/plutonic/afs-faq.html|AFS].