It can happen in a moment. Bad storm, high winds, tree branches knock out power lines. What happens to your business when the lights go out?
Sudden power outages often cause power surges, resulting in the improper shutdown of equipment and systems. That can mean one big headache getting things started up again because of the resulting physical damage to equipment. And all of it means downtime.
How are you prepared to handle this kind of situation? Do you have a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan in place?
A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is essential to every business, regardless of their size or industry, profit or non-profit.
Case in point: Here’s a recent real-life situation that happened to one of our clients. A power outage occurred, and we were remotely monitoring their systems.
Fortunately, we had arranged for a multifunction UPS (Uninterruptible Power Source) to be connected as protection against power surges and improper shutdowns.
We executed our standard procedures but were not able to bring up one of the servers. The surge of electricity due to the outage had killed the power supply to a major file server that controlled mission-critical services and financial reporting.
Read more about Disaster Recovery:
Do You Have A Disaster Recovery Plan In Place?
The good news: our client had a DRP in place with us, so that we knew the equipment they used, what their priorities were and so we could be prepared with the right parts when needed. They also happen to be a Non-Profit Organization, where budgets are tight.
People often think DRPs must cost a lot of money. We’re here to tell you that doesn’t need to be the case.
We were able to provide our client with an effective, responsive DRP well within their budget.
We had a spare power supply on hand and successfully swapped it out. This could have played out quite differently if we had needed to find out what the part was and then place an order.
Thanks to advance planning, downtime was kept to a minimum, and what could have been a major setback was quickly resolved. We had them back up and running within 3 hours (on a weekend!).
If you don’t have a DRP, what’s your safety net? Don’t make excuses – make a plan! We can show you how.