Power Outages: A Pain in the Network

As we endure regular power outages this winter as a result of bad weather, taking steps to proactively protect our business data becomes more and more critical. In a previous post entitled “Winterize Your Network,” we emphasized the importance of verifying that all battery backup units (UPS) are charged and functioning in the event of a power outage at your business. A UPS is an essential piece of equipment in protecting your server; however, the purpose of a UPS is to ensure graceful server shutdown (thereby preventing potential data loss and hardware damage), not to keep the server running so business can continue. Some battery backup units can run longer than others depending on the size of battery and electrical load; regardless, most batteries for these units are not designed to be drained and recharged many times, and will consequently require replacing after so many cycles. Also, if a power outage occurs in the summer and your air conditioners are no longer able to run, heat can also shorten the life of your batteries among other network hardware, making battery failure significantly more likely.

If a power outage lasts for more than an hour or two, a generator is the best method to use for averting downtime for your business and should eventually prove to be a worthwhile investment. A properly spec’d generator will also keep your A/C running, thereby preventing any heat-related damage as well. In purchasing a generator, your business will not only save money in avoiding lost revenue due to downtime, but will also avert the costs of repairing or replacing damaged hardware due to heat fatigue.

Although UPS and generators are essential in providing adequate backup power in the event of a power outage, no equipment is fail-proof, and there are simple things the members of your staff can do to prevent data loss as well. When preparing documents, we recommend employees save their data every 5-10 minutes and not to wait until the document is ready to be closed or completed. Power outages usually happen with no warning, so frequent saves can prove very beneficial in preventing the loss of work and time. Remember that unless the workstations are on battery backup units, there will be no time to save the work being done on them once the power drops.

Additionally, programs in the Microsoft Office Suite have what’s called an “Auto-Recover” feature that will automatically save documents every few minutes and should recover the document in the event of a shutdown (instructions for adjusting the settings for this feature can be found in Microsoft Office Help by conducting a search using the keywords “auto save.”) Even though this feature can be extremely useful, we recommend that users still save their own work frequently in case the feature is not functioning properly or the settings are unexpectedly changed for whatever reason. We have seen more failures of this feature than successes, so we council against relying on it.

Work documents are also safer when they are saved on a server and not on the workstation’s local hard drive. Servers are much better equipped than workstations to endure power failure, so data is much safer when stored there.

Investing money in UPS and generators is quite important in protecting your network; however, instructing your staff to invest time in saving their work frequently and in the appropriate place is incredibly valuable in protecting the data of your business. To learn about how 3D can work with you to proactively protect your business data, visit our website at http://www.3dcorp.us/.