[BC] Disaster planning

[Chris Gebhardt]

Barry Mishkind wrote:
> At 11:54 AM 7/3/2009, Chris Gebhardt wrote:
>>>          Chris, out of curiosity, how long does your UPS last in the
>>>          event both power feeds die?
>> the design of the system is that if both electric services fail,
>> generator takes over.  Our generator will assume the load within 30
>> seconds (including bounce delay).    If our utility feeds AND generator
>> both fail, we wait on a replacement generator.   In most cases that will
>> arrive within 2 hours, but guaranteed 4.
> 
>          It would take a major power failure to
>          cause both feeds to go down .. and would
>          that not mean most of downtown Dallas would
>          be dark?

Pretty much.   We're fed from the edge of the CBD grid, which is 
generally exceedingly reliable.  It's designed to be.  It's 5x 
redundant.  But sometimes things can happen (and do) happen, and that's 
where the generator comes in.

>          It just goes to show that it is impossible to
>          anticipate everything, but a good plan does
>          reach to the third "what if?" level.

And it goes further and more mundane than that.

>          Looks like you have given this more than
>          ten minutes thought! <g> 

Our customers come to us (or a facility like ours) because of the 
redundancies and contingencies that we have put into place.  If we 
cannot deliver on those promises, then we may as well tell folks that 
it's OK to go host their networks on T1 lines... or worse!

Chris Gebhardt
VIRTBIZ Internet Services
chris at virtbiz.com | (972) 485-4125