Dealing with power loss.

Unexpected events such as a power outage can be disruptive and costly for your business, especially if you’re unprepared. Companies can lose valuable data, revenue, and sales, and computer equipment can be damaged by sudden power outages or surges. Here are a few tips from TechPoint to help you through those challenging times, without losing your data or damaging your hardware.

  • Backup your data and systems regularly! So if you do lose your system, you don’t lose you data and it can be restored.
  • Use Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) on your computer equipment:
    • For your servers, use Smart UPS’s and implement shutdown scripts when UPS power starts to get low
    • For your workstations, use more standard UPS battery backup, so users can shut down manually
    • Similarly, use basic UPS’s for your switches, routers, and firewalls, so you can shut them down manually
  • Staff safety: nominate a safety officer to ensure that your staff has access to key or emergency equipment, especially if the power outage is destined to be a long one. Send them home if necessary.
    • Make sure that your staff has access to flashlights and other emergency lighting, so that if power goes out and it’s dark, they can easily find their way around and/or safely exit the building.
  • System Restarts: Ensure that you have nominated IT personnel available to restart your systems once power is back on, so you can get back to work. Be aware that failures and errors can happen at restart, so have experienced and qualified IT people on hand.
    • Note that servers and other equipment may need to be restarted in a certain order, so ensure that you have made this process known and available to avoid any additional errors or downtime.
    • Also make sure that you fully test your systems when they come back up. Then, when everything is running normally, message your users to inform them.

Hopefully these guidelines will help you through those tough, powerless times, which we hope won’t be too often!


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