ABSTRACT
Information technology (IT) has been complaining to
Facilities about additional power and air requirements
needed for the server room within the enterprise headquar-
ters. IT has documented the current and future environmental
requirements for production equipment. The business park,
where headquarters is located, is having new construction
being performed for other business expansions. While dig-
ging a new trench, the power company cuts the power to the
entire business park. No problem; the generator kicks on and
the server room equipment is continuing merrily on the
production processing schedule. The power company gets
the power back on, the generator senses the power and
switches back to regular power. Oops, the building’s unin-
terruptable power source (UPS) breaker trips and the server
room does not have an additional UPS in place nor does it
have a separate power source. As a result, all 200+ network
devices and servers hard crash when the building breaker
tripped and the generator did not come back on because it
sensed the line power. IT needs 72 continuous hours to
recover and bring all systems back online. Could this have
been prevented? Were there simple items that should or
could have been in place for business continuity and disaster
recovery? Although the answer is yes, there may have been
communication problems between IT and Facilities, or there
might have been budget issues over who should have paid for
the upgrades.
