We were recently contracted by an architecture firm to restore their server after its Exchange database and Active Directory became corrupted. After looking over their bill (almost $4,000) I thought I would share with you the 2 critical mistakes that lead to their server outage, contributed to this company’s downtime (two days) and, ultimately, this unnecessary cost. Imagine being without your email, schedule, and critical files for two whole days!
1. Your Server Needs Correctly Configured Battery Backup. The corruption was caused when the server was not properly shutdown during a power outage. A simple uninterruptable power supply (UPS) configured to shut the server down would have prevented this entire issue. We often find that small businesses don’t invest in these devices or don’t set them up to shutdown the actual server. Most people think of their UPS as a battery to just keep their server running when the power goes out, but the issue is what happens when the battery runs out of juice. One of the major purposes of the device is to keep your server from an abrupt loss of power during a disk write, which causes data corruption like this in the first place.
2. Make Complete Backups (Test them and have a plan!). This firm was only backing up their files. To compound this issue, they were only backing up what they thought was their critical data. This means that they were not able to restore the entire server with its configuration. Instead, we had to reinstall the server’s software, configure it, and then restore the data. Luckily we were able to get everything they needed back without having to do an expensive data recovery process. Data recovery of a server starts around $10,000.
Like many small businesses this firm had never practiced their restore process, nor did they have a disaster recovery plan. Folks, it is the middle of the summer, and thunderstorms are upon us. You need to check your UPS devices to make sure they are adequate and configured properly. If you have any questions about this, or would like us to put together a Disaster Recovery plan, contact your Dynamic Edge consultant. If you would always like the peace of mind that your computer system is being handled, call the office and talk to Debra about Fixed IT.
