Modeblue

The floods in northern England last week got me thinking about disaster recovery plans and scales of risk management etc (I’m and interesting guy really), and how my work would cope in a similar situation.

I think flooding has to be the worst disaster for a techie. It doesnt wipe out your entire server room like a bomb, doesnt finish quickly like a fire, it isn’t easily resolved like a power failure. Flooding not only leaves your servers swimming in drink (and hands up everyone who has their UPS at the bottom of the rack?) it wipes out the power, threatens the stability of the building and ruins the carpet – but doesnt mean the servers are dead. And that’s the scary part, with a generator & some clever thinking, just about any server room can run even when swimming in a foot of water.

So let me say a hearty congratulations to all the server room technicians, infrastructure engineers and IT managers that kept the businesses and internet alive for most of Derby, Sheffield and the rest of northern England last weekend – you did a great job.

I hope London stays nice and dry, but will be creating a “nothing lower than 18 inches” in my server rooms from now on!