What are the odds?

[plonq]

Day 2, and most of our email, web portals and other critical communication services are still out. Since a lot of my job relies on things that reside on the Calgary servers, this makes for a rather long day for me.

We share a building with Air Canada (for the moment - we'll be moving at the end of summer). Their main servers are three floors below us. Their backup servers are in Montréal. It is not unusual for a company to put their emergency backup servers in another city.

Apparently Shaw knew better than that though. As a major hub for all sorts of critical communication services, they decided that their emergency backup servers were too important to let them out of their sight, so they kept them a bit closer to home.

In the same building.

A floor or two below their main ones.

What's the worst that could happen? The only time they ever need to roll over to backup is when one of their techs spills a large Mountain Dew into the main servers, right? It's not like transformers ever explode and set the building on fire. I mean, what are the odds?

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Backups should be in another state, always. Have it in the next building, and fire will destroy both. Have it in another building in the city, and one hurricane/tornado/earthquake takes them both out.

People doing backups need to think about disasters. Alas, most management classes these days teach the power of positive thinking, which isn't a plus in designing things for disaster.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

> Backups should be in another state, always

Especially for critical services like this. It wasn't just us who were affected - it knocked out government servers, radio stations, even 911 service to parts of the city.

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

What building will you be moving to?

[plonq.livejournal.com]

The Convergys building down in the extreme SW corner of the city. A shitty location on just about every front.

[kfops.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, you'll be my work-neighbour! Well, okay... we're just off of Waverly, so not quite as boonie-fied... but yeah, just sort've. Uhm.

Here.

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

bummer :(

Btw, available for lunch on Monday?

[atara.livejournal.com]

you need to come over so we can key you

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

/nods

When are you guys gone?

[tydence.livejournal.com]

That's some great writing. Thanks!

[hartree.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the manager for Shaw's emergency planning.

On the other hand, the current one may not be in that position for long.

[dronon.livejournal.com]

Aw man, I had to go way to the SW corner for my sleep clinic. Actually though, I just got a letter saying that the province isn't going to be contracting out to them anymore, and instead have split up all the patients between two different contractors. If we don't like the one we've been placed with, we can switch to the other within a 21-day window, but given that the letter was dated June 26 and I only received it yesterday, that leaves... 2 business days. :P