Windstorm Fallout

Day-to-day operations for all of our clients has gotten back to normal after last weekend's thunder/lightning/wind/hail storm.

For a review, have a look at this Edmonton Journal article. Summary is that Edmonton & area got hammered by severe wind for several hours on Saturday evening. This caused several neighbourhoods to be without power for a long time - even into the next few days.

This is not a good thing for technology if you haven't been set up correctly.

In scenarios like this, it's best to turn off any non-critical hardware and unplug them from the wall (or turn off the circuit). For business-critical hardware (like servers, switches, and routers), ensure that they're connected to a UPS and make sure that the server communicates with the UPS so that it can turn itself off correctly before the UPS battery runs out.

Of course, assuming that a UPS works is never a good idea - testing all redundancies (including backups) is extremely important. For the purpose of this post, I'll focus on testing your UPS.

• Yanking the power cord out from the wall to see if the server stays up is NOT recommended. For one, if the UPS is not working correctly, your server will power down immediately causing downtime and potential data loss (or worse). Additionally, pulling the power cable out of the wall un-grounds the connections on the UPS and could cause serious damage to the connected equipment. Note: IF you want to test the UPS by cutting power to the unit, flip the breaker. This keeps the ground connected to the UPS.
• Some poeple online suggests the hairdryer test, but this is also NOT recommended as a hairdryer uses more power than a server, and for the fact that a UPS isn't designed to power your hairstyle in times of power outages.
• Normally, a UPS comes with software from the manufacturer that gives a lot of information on how the unit is performing. Installing this software and running a test through the software IS recommended. The software is smart enough to know to flip itself back to AC power during the test if the battery is found to be faulty.
• Following the UPS's user guide is also HIGHLY recommended. There are devices that should not be plugged into the UPS (ie Printers, Scanners, Faxes). Follow the recommendations by the people who design the device.

There are a lot of more technical tips about testing a UPS online, but this should be a good starting point for the basic user.

Even keeping this in mind, with a crazy storm like we had still causes issues. At Chickenlip HQ, even though we didn't have any outages, we still had some issues with our own equipment. While lightning was striking, we experienced several brown outs, where the power would fluctuate, making lights flicker and our own UPS's kick in and out of battery mode. Our switch didn't handle this too well, and caused our network to go down. Power-cycling the switch solved the problem immediately for us and we were back up and running fairly quickly.